


The Myrtle Tree in Jedha

by LadyCharity



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst, Family, Friendship, Gen, Moral Dilemmas, Sibling Love, ambiguous ethics of war, bonding through pain, the empire is controversial, the empire uses indoctrination
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-20 09:44:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 24,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9485543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyCharity/pseuds/LadyCharity
Summary: “You led us to find the plans to destroy the Death Star,” Bodhi says in a low voice. Jyn winces, as she understands why he chooses to trust her, of all people. “Now please, Jyn. Let me save it.”In which love may make Bodhi compromise the galaxy.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has taken me roughly 3 weeks to write, and I'm only just finishing the last section of it. 
> 
> It is a labour of love, and I really hope you guys will read and enjoy it. I got a lot of inspiration from history, so my portrayal of the Empire isn't necessarily from gathering information from Star Wars lore so much as looking at the patterns of past dictatorships/regimes, which I thought would be interesting to complicate Bodhi's defection even more. 
> 
> Any questions or prompts to let me rant on and on about the meta of this fic, I'd love to answer at my tumblr! :) (mykingdomforapen) 
> 
> Chapter 1 of 2, a 30some or longer paged oneshot split into two. Please stick around for the next installment!

When Scarif dies, Bodhi does not look back. He had watched Jedha crumble into less than dust earlier and let his mind do the same; he will not make that mistake again.

Jyn has Cassian’s wrist in one hand and Chirrut’s ankle in another, holding onto them with such fierce desperation that her bottom lip trembled at the thought of letting go of anyone, like she was the one responsible of clinging them to life. Bodhi hears Baze shouting himself hoarse to whatever rebel still standing for bacta patches, or compression, or something, but Bodhi does not know what is happening. It would require him to look back, and he cannot.

The shockwave of the exploding planet sends the ship shuttling nearly off course. It means nothing. Jedha’s red clay temples crumpling like a piece of paper. No, that means nothing. How can total opposites mean the same thing?

No, Bodhi cannot think about this right now. He must get them back to Yavin 4. The consequences of their actions will have to wait.

A lump forms in his throat. His terror is threatening to choke him. He puts the ship into hyperspace and for a wild moment he braces himself for his neck to snap, before he would have to fear what he might have done.

“Bodhi,” says Jyn.

Her voice breaks, although he can barely hear it. She is in the back of the ship, but she staggers towards him. He looks down and sees how much his hands are shaking. He can barely hold onto the controllers of the ship.

“What have we done?” Bodhi says.

“We did it,” Jyn says.

She wraps her arms around him from behind. He can feel her fingerprints, claiming him as hers so that the Force would not try to take his or anyone else’s life.Mine, her desperate grip says. Mine. You can’t take them from me. Mine.

“We did it,” Jyn says. Tears run down her face, she doesn’t know whether to laugh or sob. “We did it. We’re alive. We did it.”

“What have we done?” Bodhi says.

His ears are ringing. He cannot take his eyes off of the window. Scarif was leagues away, but he cannot look back.

“Bodhi,” says Jyn. Her grip tenses. So does her voice. She takes Bodhi’s shoulder fiercely. “Are you all right? Can you hear me?”

If he turns to face her, he swears in his heart that the galaxy would crumble onto him. He can already feel it crushing his skull, feel it suffocating him. There is no such thing as a rearview window on this ship, and hyperspace means that they are racing through a seemingly endless river of light. He swears that if he looks back, his entire world may collapse. He cannot risk it.

“Bodhi,” says Jyn. “Please.”

The ringing in his ear grows louder. He does not remember how far to take the ship in hyperspace, when to stop, or which button does what, how to stop even if he needs to. His head is caving in until the pain makes him cry out and makes him like a child again.

“Sattva,” he weeps. “It hurts, Sattva.”

He doesn’t know who takes over piloting the ship, or where Jyn’s voice goes as her cry diminishes underneath the stinging ringing in his ears. All he knows is that a black hole swallows him whole.

 

Bodhi wakes up whimpering. The sound alone, pathetic and almost animalistic, is what jolts him awake, and he finds himself in a bed on Yavin 4, skin still sticky with bacta, his head heavy.

He does not sit upright in shock, or jerk in his sleep, although he does not think that he can physically move at all. He lets out a whimper, and then his eyes open, his hands still and his limbs still even though his heart is ramming against the thin sheet on him. He lies still, waiting for the memories of a nightmare to trickle back into him through the cracks between subconscious and conscious. They do not, and he is left with the racing heart and balmy skin and the sense that something had gone horribly wrong and only shadows of images of what that may be.

Exhausted and frustrated when that fails, he rests the back of his hand against his forehead. Dregs of memories stew in him, like the leftover leaves of a long drunk tea. Scarif comes most boldly to mind--delivering the message to the rebels to deactivate the shield, knocking the grenade out of the ship just in time, but not in time to hide himself from the explosion which nearly blew his brain through his skull from the force of it.

The faces of his companions connect with clumsily recollected names, and he grasps at it, clings to it, because all of a sudden he does not remember the last time he saw them. His sight blurs and he sits up immediately, his head threatening to burst.

“Whoa.” A hand roughly grabs him by the shoulder to steady him. “Hey, it’s okay.”

Bodhi turns his head.

“Jyn,” he says.

She is sitting on a bed next to his, with her ankle bandaged and her right side tender. There is a bacta patch on her shoulder and a sharp light in her eyes, like a candle lit in a pitch black cave that makes your eyes sting and water just by looking at it.

“I was afraid you didn’t make it,” he says.

A corner of her lips twitches upward.

“Me?” she says. “I thought _you_ wouldn’t make it.”

“Why would you think that?” he says.

Jyn bites the inside of her cheek.

“The medics said you might be confused for a bit,” she says. “Not well. That’s okay. You don’t have to. Just remember that we’re here. We’re safe. Cassian and Chirrut--they’re more badly hurt, so they’re being treated somewhere else. Baze wouldn’t sit still the moment he got out of the bacta tank.”

Bodhi closes his eyes. Her voice is heavy, not with burden but with time, miles ahead of where Bodhi can comfortably remember and he cannot catch up. He rummages through his memory, trying to fit the pieces that do not match from the past week. The red stones of Jedha crosses his mind and his breath hitches.

“Scarif,” says Bodhi. “Is it gone?”

Jyn hesitates, her lips parting. She pulls her hand away before he realizes that he is unintentionally hurting her.

“The weapon,” says Jyn. “They turned it against their own base.”

Bodhi smiles. He only knows that because he feels his lips twist, while his heart races until it aches.

“I don’t remember that,” he says.

In the back of his mind, he knows that that isn’t necessarily true. He simply cannot believe it.

“Did everyone make it out?” says Bodhi.

“Yes,” says Jyn. She looks away. “As many as we could find alive, anyway.”

“How many?” says Bodhi.

Jyn shrugs a shoulder.

“Twelve in total,” she says.

“But that’s so little,” says Bodhi. “There are at least ten thousand stationed on Scarif regularly.”

Jyn shoots Bodhi an appraising look.

“We only brought back what rebels we could find,” she says. “Bodhi, what do you remember?”

Bodhi falters. The images fall back into place, although he cannot tell if it is because he is imagining them, and telling him that this is true, even if he has never seen it happen with his own eyes. No, it would make sense to only take back the rebels. Time was short, surely--and their ship was only so small. And the Death Star is so vicious that it does not care who it eats up in its fire as long as it is gone.

Jyn places a hand on Bodhi’s, and it strikes him how much he had waited for her to pull away from him instead.

“The entire planet?” he says. “Against their own planet?”

“The Empire has never really valued life in general, has it?” says Jyn.

Bodhi’s jaw tightens. He swings his legs over the edge of the bed and marvels at how he is still all in one piece.

“What is going to happen to us?” he says.

Jyn looks to the door. She is just as much of an outsider here as he is. She had spent most of her time rebelling in the form of survival in the face of little odds. He could not say anything of merit for himself.

“You’d be safer here with the Rebellion,” says Jyn. “You’re still wanted by the Empire for deserting.”

“Would I?” says Bodhi.

He says it with a hint of incredulous laughter, the kind that is inherently terrified.

“It’s all Empire outside of this,” Jyn says. “Unless you can find some deserved moon where they haven’t landed on yet.”

Bodhi looks down--they had taken away his pilot uniform, with its Imperial insignia branded on the sleeve like a handcuff. Now he bears that insignia like a tattoo, because even if he helped to steal the Death Star plans for the Rebellion there is no doubt that they will remember him as nothing else but the Imperial pilot. He had given everything away to sneak a message from Galen Erso to Saw Gerrera and let Bor Gullet tear his mind apart, after all. The medics may call it concussion, maybe they should call it denial to themselves.

Jyn’s hand tightens around his. Perhaps she feels that trembling heart that he wears on his sleeve under her palm, because her voice is firm.

“You’re no less welcome here than I am,” says Jyn. “But if I don’t trust them completely, you don’t have to either.”

Bodhi gives a soft laugh. The logic is fatalistic. He supposes that at the very least, he is not alone in this thread-thin grey line between the Empire and the Rebellion.

“You don’t trust anybody completely,” Bodhi says.

Jyn’s jaw twitches.

“Yes and no,” she says. “But that is neither here nor there.”

Bodhi lets out a breath. He gathers himself gradually to his feet, and is delighted to find that he can still stand, even if his head is trying to convince him otherwise.

“What happened to Scarif?” says Bodhi.

Jyn stares up at him. She opens her mouth, then closes it.

“It blew up,” she says.

Bodhi breathes in sharply. He holds onto the edge of a nightstand for balance.

“Just like that?” he says.

“You should stay in bed, maybe,” says Jyn.

“Why?” says Bodhi.

“Because,” Jyn says. “I’ve told you this before. You saw it happening. You--you were the one who got us out of there when it was happening.”

Bodhi blinks. He thinks he can see the edges of memory, sharp enough to figure out where they connect and can be put together. But the glass is fogged, and he can hardly see them, and when he forces them together the wrong way they nick his finger and sting.

“It feels like a dream,” says Bodhi.

Jyn gives a wry smile, the kind one gives when they do not know what else to say.

-

Bodhi remembers being six years old and waking up crying. He remembers, in his dream, screwing his eyes shut and letting out a sob and suddenly he felt the sharp cold of the desert night on his cheek. Then the hot tears that collected at his nose bridge, and the fresh grief that a nightmare swindled him into with the promise of good night, pleasant dreams.

It was still dark outside, and the images of a monster ripping out his family’s throats were still fresh in his mind. He wanted to throw back his covers and run to Ammi and Abbu, bury himself into their bed and breathe them in instead of this cold, frighteningly open air, if that was what it would take to be safe. Instead, he was too paralyzed to move further than burying his face into the thin blanket over his shoulders, stemming his tears before he could cry out and wake his family up.

The nightmare repeated itself in his mind, plastered on every corner of his thoughts so that he could never turn away from them. Why would his mind betray him like that? He tried to recollect his nightly ritual, if he had missed a step in his nighttime blessings or brushing that cursed him to poor dreams. All he could conclude was that he was petrified, and he wanted his ammi.

Then, a hand reached out and brushed the hair on his head. He gasped quietly before drawing closer to the gentle touch. He did not lift his face from the covers--he was still struggling to wipe the tears from his eyes before they came out. The tender fingers quietly sifted through his hair with small, soft strokes. Bodhi wondered if maybe he had cried out that would have woken someone up, or jerked suddenly and anyone sharing his bed would jolt in surprise. But he doubted it; Sattva always just _knew_ , better than anyone else.

They would have to wake up in a couple of hours to start work before the sunrise, picking trash from the streets and selling what scraps of metal or wire they could salvage for the day’s bread. Bodhi knew there was still dirt under Sattva’s fingernails combing his hair, and breaking callouses on those palms, but in that moment her hands were silk and smelt of sweet myrtle, and if she was too tired to continue she did not protest.

There was no counting how many minutes passed of Sattva patting his hair so that with each stroke smudged the nightmare until it was too muddied to remember what was so terrifying. Eventually her hand stopped, and when Bodhi finally emerged from burrowing in the sheets he saw that she had fallen back asleep, her own dark hair sticking to the corner of her lips that she had not bothered to brush away. Within minutes, he fell fast asleep as well.

 

Bodhi has learned by now to use rags to pick up any scraps of junk he found on the street. It was not convenient, and the rags themselves would soon be stripped to nothing but threads in a couple of days, but it was better than using his bare hands. The neighbor’s son had once cut his hand on a speeder scrap a couple months ago, and now he had no hand.

At first his mother would only allow him to carry the sack in which they carried all their finds, even if the load was heavy for his arms she would rather have his shoulders ache than his hands cut. But as the sun grew hotter and their hands sticky with sweat and dust, it became inevitably apparent that Bodhi’s fingers were quick and his eyes were sharp and he was already out here in the heaps of rubbish, anyway.

He remembered standing before the piles of garbage, the stench burning his nose and eyes and not a glint of precious metal spotted under the unrisen sun. And Sattva, putting her hands firmly on her nonexistent hips, would say to him, “Look at all that buried treasure.”

She told him that they were actually looking for kyber crystals, and that the Jedi are depending on them. And they will reward them with frozen rosewater cream and chilled fruit, and let them into their spaceships to see the stars. One pouch full of metal made one lightsaber, and Bodhi was delighted to be of help.

Sometimes he would find scraps of paper, crumpled and stained with unmentionables, with brushed strokes and pictures that made his heart ache with hunger. He would fold up these old newspapers, or old writings from a tired songwriter, or posted notices from the Republic, and hide them in his pocket to fawn over at night, fancying that he was teaching himself how to read while Sattva assigned new meanings to each letter every day. On one day Sattva would say that the yellowing paper with a large picture of a starship and boldly printed letters was saying that they were hiring new pilots between the ages of five and eight; on another day she would tell him that a spaceship was for sale for two pouches of metal. Bodhi would always trust her, even if he did not believe her.

When the neighbor’s son had to cut off his hand because the gangrene had spread and there was not enough metal in the rubbish heap to pay for enough bacta, Bodhi would sneak to the friend’s bedroom window every day. He climbed up the myrtle tree to that second story window and tell him about the stories that Sattva told him, or sneak him cubes of frozen duree that Bodhi snatched from an inattentive vendor. He would hide from his parents in the midst of those pale blooms and remind his friend that there is a life worth living. 

On the other hand, Sattva spent all week scrounging for large boxes. She could not write what she wanted on their sides, so she painted a crumpled ship in one, a duree fruit on another, and repeated that process until all the banged-up boxes in the yard had their designation. She went around the neighborhoods of Jedha, firmly planting the boxes at their front door.

One is for metal, Sattva explained to neighbors while tugging Bodhi along. And the other is for waste. If you use these boxes, we’ll take the rubbish for you to the heap, and collect your metal. No one will have to dig around and cut themselves anymore.

Family friends complied to humour her, and the occasional neighbor who had enough space in their house for it to not make a difference shrugged their shoulders and gave in. Where she got so many boxes and markers, no one doubted Sattva’s drive to find whatever she needed and no one suspected Bodhi’s surreptitious hand in stealing a couple of crates from the market when his doe eyes blinded everyone from mischief.

Collecting metal by the bin rather than digging through the waste meant long nights of dragging people’s rubbish from their homes into the heap for them, but easier mornings of not blindly groping in the dawn for marketable waste. Sattva grinned wider and wider as more people adopted her strategy, and Bodhi would not have to wrap his hands in rags to keep the metal from cutting his palms.

“You have the power to make change, Bodhi,” Sattva said to him. “But you'll always need help from others to do it. No one can change anything alone.”

“What do you want to change now?” said Bodhi.

Sattva looked out to the streets from the rooftop on which they sat, their bare feet dangling over the edge of the roof. They watched the other children run to their school with their books under their arms and lunch in their sacks, jabbering about examinations and assignments and the nasty teachers they cannot stand. The Rooks lived in the outskirts of the city, and sometimes when they were very lucky, standing on the rooftops they could catch a glimpse of the glint of sunlight off of the gilded city hall in the center of the capital, so golden and so far that it was almost like a natural phenomenon just to see them. Their family had no reason to venture to the cobblestone streets of Jedha’s museums and temples--most likely they never will.

“There’s so much I want differently,” she said with a lost laugh. “I don’t know where to start.”

 

The Empire came to Jedha when Bodhi was too little to see their flag flying from the steeples over his head, and he was fascinated of the strange looking helmets and the rifles of the stormtroopers from afar. They looked like toy soldiers come to life, marching left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot.

When the Empire came to Jedha, the first thing that Bodhi knew of them was that they made his dreams come true. His hands were still chalky from the day’s work, and his knees were scraped and scabbed, and his mother took one look at him and worried her bottom lip.

“Come here,” she said, and she scrubbed at his hands, his feet, his scalp until his skin was raw from the impact. Sattva stood in the corner laughing at Bodhi’s complaints--her laugh was not like the neighbors’ girls down the street, because it boomed like thunder for a squirrely ten-year-old. That was, until their mother released Bodhi from the tub and dragged Sattva into the water next. She could not wipe off the callouses and the brittle fingernails but it was still enough.

“You’re doing it too tightly,” Sattva said as their mother braided her hair, yanking at each part. “Ammi, let me do it myself.”

“Your braids are lopsided,” says their mother. Her own hair is coiled at the crown of her head, thick and dark like the knots on a tree. “Not appropriate for school.”

Sattva turned sharply towards her mother, tangling her hair in her mother’s fingers in the process. Bodhi, more contained but less subtle, wordlessly scrambled to his mother’s side, heart skipping until it tripped and tumbled.

“School?” said Sattva. “But we don’t go to school.”

Her voice was jagged with suspicion, looking from their mother to Bodhi, as if Bodhi would have any better sense of what was going on. Bodhi held his breath, his skin suddenly itching because it could not contain that rapid flood of anticipation that poured through his blood.

“The Empire has made it mandatory for every child to go to school,” said their mother.

Her breath was bated, as if she did not know whether to be elated or afraid.

“But we can’t afford it,” said Sattva. “That’s impossible.”

“The Empire has done away with school fees so that all children can attend,” said their mother. Her hands tried to push Sattva back, to fix the braid. “You and your brother will not go to the heap tomorrow.”

There was a sudden stillness in the air. One beat of their mother’s silence and Sattva immediately jumped to her feet. She grabbed Bodhi’s hands and spun him in circles around their room, throwing her head back and laughing that boom, boom thunderous laughter that could belong to no one else but her.

When their parents tried to brush them off to bed early, Sattva pulled Bodhi to the crumpled paper that she and Bodhi pasted onto the wall for insulation and decoration. For the next hour, their hearts racing with the anticipation that these strange shapes and strokes will finally mean something to them, she drew Bodhi close and told him the stories of what all those unreadable words said for the last time.

“This one,” said Sattva as she pointed to a paper with the galaxy stamped in fading ink, “says that the children of Jedha are born to touch the stars, one day,” and Bodhi believed her.

-

Cassian and Chirrut are still in bacta tanks, but the medics insist that they will be out in no time. It gives Bodhi a sense of anticipation, something to wait for and hope for. It gives him a reason to not think about leaving Yavin 4 yet, even though he knows that the time will come. He does not belong in the Rebellion, but he does not know where else he would go.

He does not know why he is so lost. If he must be honest to himself, he had not expected to survive the events of Scarif. He had not planned on it, to be fair. And yet he is still alive, breathing and aching, grasping at his memories like they are dust in a storm and getting his palms blistered in the process.

“Out of commission, my arse,” says Jyn, flexing her bandaged ankle. “My ears work perfectly fine to at least attend the meeting.”

“What?” says Bodhi. “They haven’t promoted you to supreme leader of the Alliance for essentially saving their entire rebellion?”

Jyn wrinkles her nose. Bodhi gives a wry smile.

“I’m not asking for medals,” she says.

“I know you aren’t,” says Bodhi.

“But _we_ gave them the Death Star plans when they all opted to give up,” she says. “We have some right to be in the room where the plans happen.”

“What do you want to hear?” says Bodhi.

Jyn opens her mouth, then closes it. Her eyes are steely.

“I want to see this through,” she says. “Wherever that goes.”

She shoves a clean sock over her bandaged foot. Bodhi furrows his eyebrows.

“What does it mean?” says Bodhi. “To destroy the Death Star?”

Jyn shrugs, rubbing the dirt off of her fingernails.

“Make it defunct, I suppose,” she says. “My father wasn’t--well, he wasn’t very specific.”

She looks away. Bodhi suddenly wonders if he ought to sit next to her, or if he ought to keep silent about what is already halfway out of his mouth.

“I’m sorry about Galen,” Bodhi says. “He was a good man.”

“Oh--” Jyn says, and she turns away. Bodhi waits with bated breath, terrified that he might have hurt her, but her eyes move swiftly across her face and he realizes that she is trying hard to keep her composure. When she turns back to him, there are glints in her eyes and eyelashes, but her cheeks are otherwise dry.

“It’s what it is,” she says, her voice thin. She hesitates, then looks up to him. “You knew him well, didn’t you?”

Bodhi does not know the answer. At any other time, he could consider Galen a friend--he talked with Galen about his family, and Galen to Bodhi, they shared enough for Galen to trust Bodhi, or at least be desperate enough to depend on him. But Galen is dead now, and there is something uneasy about speaking on behalf of a dead person about one’s friendship. There must be a thousand other things Bodhi does not know about Galen and likewise, and now that is unlikely to ever change.

“He was my friend,” says Bodhi. “He was very kind to me.”

“You probably miss him more than I do,” Jyn says.

“No,” says Bodhi. “Just differently.”

Jyn does not argue.

“I don’t know what’s better,” Jyn says. “To have just lived the rest of my life assuming he is dead, or seeing him die.”

Bodhi lets out a short laugh at the hauntingly familiar question. It catches Jyn off guard.

“Sorry,” he says. “It’s just, I don’t know the answer to that at all.”

Jyn stands up, breaking the awkward silence. She favors one foot, and her wrinkled nose denotes to Bodhi that this is no favorable position either.

“Should you be doing that?” says Bodhi.

“I’m not out of commission until I’m dead,” says Jyn. “I need to see this plan through.”

She goads him to come and support her. He pulls one of her arms over his shoulders, although the height difference meant he has to stoop to keep from dislocating her shoulder. Ultimately, they both depend heavily on the walls to keep their balance, because Bodhi’s body still aches and Jyn isn’t necessarily confident in someone else’s help whether Bodhi is physically able or not.

When they hobble their way to the meeting area, the crowd has already sweltered to the point that Bodhi cannot see over the heads of several choice aliens. He is lucky to catch a glimpse of the plans, projected on a distant screen. The Death Star looks innocuous in etched lines.

“The battle station is heavily guarded  and carries a firepower greater than half the star fleet,” a bearded man at the middle of the room says. “Its defenses are designed around a direct large-scale assault. A small one-man fighter should be able to penetrate the outer defense.”

Bodhi helps Jyn to find a spot from where she could have some sort of view. Considering that she is even smaller than Bodhi, the attempt is unfruitful.

“Pardon me for asking, sir, but what good are snub fighters going to be against that?”

“Well, the Empire doesn't consider a small one-man fighter to be any threat, or they'd have a tighter defense. An analysis of the plans provided by Princess Leia has demonstrated a weakness in the battle station.”

Jyn holds her breath. Maybe she pauses for a split second, hoping to hear them murmur Galen Erso’s name in acknowledgement. She is left unfulfilled instead.

“The approach will not be easy,” the man continues. “You are required to maneuver straight down this trench and skim the surface to this point. The target area is only two meters wide. It's a small thermal exhaust port, right below the main port. The shaft leads directly to the reactor system. A precise hit will start a chain reaction which should destroy the station.”

“No,” Bodhi says.

He is drowned out by the murmurs of disbelief among the other rebels. Only Jyn hears his protest; she looks up to him incredulously.

“Do you think it can’t do that?” she says.

Bodhi’s mouth goes dry. The reality of this mad situation he is in--among Rebels, fighting war against the Empire--creeps in on him with a familiar fear and horror that Bor Gullet’s tentacles had instilled in him. But when the plan for the rebellion was to 'steal the Death Star plans,' no one had ever truly said out loud that it would destroy everything and everyone that happened to live on it. 

“It can,” Bodhi says. “But we _can’t_.”

He takes in a deep breath. He pushes himself away from the wall, his hands trembling. He has never been the type to raise his voice unless it is to raise alarm. He generally never has the luxury of being heard.

“Sir,” he says.

His heart catches in his throat when gazes swivel towards him. He suddenly misses the look of unrecognition, the kind he usually earns in the day of the life of a cargo pilot when his superiors recognise him no better than they can distinguish stormtroopers apart. Without a doubt he can tell just by the hundreds of pairs of eyes on him that they know exactly who he is, or at least, who his former employee is.

“Sir,” he says, and it takes a second try for the leader to root out who amongst the crowd is addressing him. “There are ten thousand at least who are stationed at the Death Star.”

“I am well aware,” says Dodonna. “Ten thousand will not be able to stop a single one-man fighter from blowing up the station.”

“I mean,” Bodhi says, “that there are ten thousand lives you mean to take in an instant.”

Immediately the chill sets in. Jyn’s pincer grip suddenly creeps up to Bodhi’s elbow. Bodhi feels his heart nearly stop at the sudden tension between him and just about every single living being on this lonely planet. He may be wearing simple medical bay attire, but he feels the Imperial insignia heavy upon him.

He draws breath, however much it rattles in fear. For Sattva, he thinks.

“They would do the very same to us,” says Draven, raising his chin. “They have done the very same to Jedha. To their own base on Scarif.”

“Scarif is not yours to mourn,” says Bodhi.

Jyn sucks in a sharp intake of breath behind him. Bodhi clenches his teeth, willing himself not to crumple with submission. These rebels here are no Death Star.

Dodonna raises his head, cold fury sharpening the lines on his face.

“What the hell is this, Mothma?” he says. “Didn’t you say that this pilot was a defector?” He turns back sharply to Bodhi. “Perhaps you have no qualms about the Empire destroying our homes, _pilot_ , but--”

“Nor are you the only one who mourns Jedha,” Bodhi says.

His voice breaks by the end. The falling mountains of his home are crushing his chest. Don’t think, he wills himself. Don’t think about it. Pretend it isn’t real. Pretend it never happened. You don’t know for sure it happened. He breathes in and out deeply.

“You are trying to destroy a weapon, not a people,” says Bodhi. “Put out a warning--give them instructions to evacuate, then destroy the weapon without having to take lives as needlessly as they take everyone else’s.”

“This isn’t some game in the school playground where there are fair rules and referees, boy,” says Draven. “All we have on our hands is a one-man fighter, and once the Empire has any idea of what we know, they will man every port to take down anyone coming towards the trench.”

“Bodhi,” Jyn says. Her voice is low. “You know that secrecy is the only thing on our side.”

It is Jyn’s tone that crumples his insides. He cannot bear to spare a glance at her; if she looks upon him with disgust or abhorrence, he would rather assume it than confirm it.

“My sister is the only one on mine,” he whispers.

He looks Draven straight in the eye unwaveringly, facing rejection or exile or maybe even execution from a horrified Alliance for the slimmest, most unstable chance that Sattva will return to him. Maybe this is why he did not die as he was meant to on Jedha or Scarif, when the atmosphere sucked in all the laggers and shredded the atoms and he had every reason to have been left behind--if he could do anything with his life, it is to find her.

“We are at _war_ , pilot,” Draven says.

“Wars have rules of engagement,” Bodhi says.

“There are no civilians on the Death Star to cater to!”

“But there are plumbers,” Bodhi says with a broken laugh. “There are scribes. There are cooks who happen to wear a uniform. And wire credits to their families from their pay. There are people who scrub the floor and have never held a rifle in their hands.”

“Anyone who does anything to convenience the Empire is no civilian,” Mon Mothma says. “And are as guilty for the deaths of our friends and family as stormtroopers.”

“General,” Bodhi says, and although his voice is firm his head feels faint. “You would do the very same to tens of thousands as the Empire did to Jedha. And Scarif.”

Immediately the room is thrown into an uproarious chaos. Bodhi suddenly found himself shoved against the wall, aliens and humans squabbling at his face as his heart suddenly raced in terror at the fury closing in on him.

He clenches his jaw, bracing himself for the blows of an angry mob, before someone shoves themselves in front of him, sandwiched between him and and the rebellion. He chokes on his breath in surprise of his aspiring martyr: Jyn.

“Get off of his case!” she shouted at them. “Is it a crime to wish for a little less death?”

“He advocates for the lives of Imperials!” one alien hisses. “How do we know he isn’t here as a double spy?”

“It’s because of his help that you have your Death Star plans!” says Jyn.

“Plans he cries out against using!”

This hatches another fresh swell of outcry. Bodhi suppresses winces as if each protest is a lashing, and suddenly he chokes as if he is drowning in all that anger and sound. And yet there is no flare of indignation in his chest; he has always been more of a pitiful creature than a pitiable one, and even now he is sharply aware of how much of a sniveling, double-crossing rat he must look to the room, for the sake of a single ghost. But dignity does not change minds or save lives, so it has never been a topmost priority to him. 

Draven's voice rises effortlessly over the crowd, commanding all attention. Bodhi can barely bring himself to look up from the floor anymore. His chest heaves and it occurs to him that he can hardly breathe, so that when the din dies away in deference to Draven, his jagged breaths cut through the silence like a hammer shattering glass.

“If you do not support this decision of the Rebellion,” Draven says, “then remove yourself from this meeting. There will be nothing for you to stay here for.”

The ambiguous ‘here’ lays heavily on Bodhi’s chest. When he finally manages to gather himself, Draven turns his attention to the rest of the room.

“This pilot has not yet lost his stripes,” says Draven. “In time of battle, do not look to the pilot for help, for he will not give it to you.”

Bodhi’s eyes burn with shame. This is not bravery. This is not love, either, whatever it is that he is doing. It is betrayal and stupidity. But what he knows is that the Alliance is wrong. The Alliance cannot choose to mourn Jedha and then blast her last star from the sky without a second thought.

He leaves. He does not give a passing thought to the terrified tears collecting on the rim of his eyes. or the Imperial insignia branded on his back where everyone’s gaze burns him as he retreats. As the doors to the meeting room swing shut behind him, he walks faster. Ten steps later he realizes that he is hugging himself, his chest constricted as terror laces his lungs. Fifteen steps later he realizes that his footsteps have an echo. He looks over his shoulder.

“Jyn,” he says.

Jyn says nothing. Her jaw is set like stone, and there is neither pity nor passion in her gaze. Only cold, unwavering pragmatism. That sets his stomach turning.

“Do you think I’m a traitor too?” he says.

Jyn raises her eyebrows.

“You already are one,” says Jyn.

“Ha,” says Bodhi.

Jyn maintains the chilled distance between them. Bodhi counts silently in his head the seconds until she will undoubtedly turn on her heel and leave him. His chest aches in preparation.

“You’re just naive,” she says. “That’s all.”

Somehow, this cuts him deeper.

“Naive?” he says. “That’s the word you’d use?”

“This is a war, Bodhi,” says Jyn. “You can’t fight a bloodless war.”

“I’m wildly aware,” says Bodhi.

“So why are you suggesting this?” says Jyn. “You fight back, but what Draven said is true. They are killing innocent lives with that Death Star. They nearly killed _us_. That weapon has to be taken down and if you try to give them any sort of forewarning because you think that’s the right thing to do then you’ll throw away everything we just risked our lives to do.”

Bodhi takes in a deep breath. He does not want to fight. Not because he is afraid of conflict; after all, he has lived life afraid and finds himself rather used to the feeling.

“We’re a rebellion,” says Bodhi. “But that doesn’t mean we have to depend on violence for change. Then we’re no different.”

“We can’t well depend on change of heart either, if that’s what your plan is founded on,” says Jyn. “If all it took was to sit down with a Stormtrooper or someone and tell them, yes, join the Rebellion, it’s where everyone’s happy, all we would have to do was invite the Empire for tea.”

“You won’t change their mind by killing them either,” Bodhi says.

Jyn clenches her fist. The gesture makes Bodhi start silently counting down in his head again.

“We’ve gone past the point of changing anyone’s mind,” Jyn says. “Nineteen years too late for that.”

“No,” says Bodhi. “It’s not.”

“We don’t have the lifespan for that kind of idealism,” says Jyn.

“It’s not nineteen years too late,” says Bodhi. “I’m here.”

Jyn’s words stumble into a short stop.

“That’s not the same,” she says.

“Yes it is,” says Bodhi.

“You’ve never killed anyone.”

“Would it make a difference to you if I did?”

Jyn closes her eyes. She takes in a deep breath.

“This isn’t fair,” says Jyn.

“No,” says Bodhi. “It isn’t. Because Galen took a risk to trust me. Not everyone gets a chance to rebel.”

Jyn’s jaw stiffens. Bodhi licks his lips nervously.  

“There are people in the Empire who are scared, like I was,” he says. “Or confused, or resigned, or completely ignorant. There are people who are too young to know anything else other than the Empire, and follow it because it’s the only thing they know. There are people who just want to try to change things for the better, and they think changing the Empire might work.They never have a chance to rebel. I felt all those things for years. I started doubting the Empire ages ago. But I didn’t do anything about it because I didn’t know what to do about it until Galen gave me that chance.”

Jyn’s lips tighten into a thin line as she slowly catches on to where he is taking her. She takes in a deep breath and does her damndest not to acknowledge it.

“Who’s on that Death Star, Bodhi?” says Jyn.

Bodhi smiles, although it hurts. He doesn’t know why when there is nothing to celebrate, except that there is only one person on this planet that can understand him, and she chooses to.

“My sister,” says Bodhi.

“As a prisoner?” Jyn says.

She says it with a sliver of hope, as if this does not have to be as messy as it can be.

“No,” he says.

Jyn closes her eyes. There are a thousand arguments and persuasions in Bodhi’s mind that he knows will cut Jyn to the core, so that he could crawl into her bones and she would see all of this with his eyes. But he will not, because he knows how much this tremulous place hurts. Saving the galaxy should not come at the cost of their loved ones, and yet that is what the galaxy demands.

There are a thousand pleas that Bodhi could give to Jyn, pleas that she would only relate to too well. He chooses not to, because it is terrifying to not know what is the right thing to do, and he doesn’t want to scare her with that.

“You led us to find the plans to destroy the Death Star,” Bodhi says in a low voice. Jyn winces, as she understands why he chooses to trust her, of all people. “Now please, Jyn. Let me save it.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! This is a very long chapter, haha, but of course, it is the rest of the story. Please enjoy <3.

“Under the Empire, everyone is equal,” was the first sentence that Bodhi could write out on his own.

He was so proud of his penmanship and his spelling that he pasted it on the walls next to the posters that he and Sattva found in the dump, which now he could read that they said REPUBLIC IN SHAMBLES, SPEEDER FOR SALE, and MISSING: HAVE YOU SEEN HER? Under this banner he slept and dreamed and tossed and turned, because under this banner was he allowed to have a chance of life outside of the slums at all, and he would kiss the feet of the Empire if they had legs to begin with.

But of all the children who attended school for the first time, none could hold a match to the powerhouse that was Sattva Rook, who rose from the first level to the fifth in a matter of two years. She unfurled like a glorious bloom and school was her water and sunlight that had been kept from her for so long. And because she showed favouritism as far as tutoring went, Bodhi rose quickly behind her.

Sattva would stay after classes to study, to badger the teachers with more assignments, and to tutor any students that were struggling to catch on. Bodhi, as much as he relished the classroom, would rather scamper to the rooftops of the city after class and watch the starships that soared overhead in droves like never before, imagining himself among their flock with the adrenaline in his jittering bones. He would scan the constellations and wonder if, like letters and reading, he would someday understand the stars.

The professors adored Sattva. They came from the Empire, in their sleek white uniforms, their crisp and clean accents, and they marvelled at Sattva’s intelligence. With their dark gloved hands they patted Sattva on the shoulder and say, you are going to make the Empire good and proud one day, young lady. One day you will rattle the stars.

Bodhi’s chest swelled with pride for his older sister. No one in Jedha prior to the Empire would have ever believed such a thing for an illiterate child of the slums, and now Sattva was rising above even the children who had been schooled all their childhoods. Everyone is equal under the Empire, but his Sattva will reach the stars before anyone else.

Bodhi and Sattva’s hands were still dirty and calloused from work each day; school did not mean they could afford to live. Right after school they would dash through the city to drag the carts of rubbish to the heap, reciting their examinations or history or mathematical formulas to each other to engrain it all into their memory. They read aloud even the dryest texts found on ripped up posters and wrote down the ones they did not know on their shoulders to remember to ask their professor the next day.

Sattva upgraded themselves to carts to carry the garbage, rather than dragging boxes and boxes with wheelbarrows to the respective rubbish heap. By eleven she had it in her mind to charge people for collecting their rubbish, by age thirteen she was haggling for third-hand speeders that Bodhi had a knack of driving for a more efficient garbage route, by fourteen and a half she was grinning at the governor whom the Empire appointed to the capital of Jedha, sweat gathering at her upper lip as she managed speeder-loads of rubbish and credits filling her pockets.

“Well, well,” said the governor with a booming laugh. “Who are our civil servants who has kept our city clean?”

Sattva saluted. Bodhi smiled before looking down at his feet, sliding behind his sister.

“Sattva Rook,” she said. “And my brother, Bodhi. It’s our job to collect people’s rubbish.”

The governor smiled warmly. His eyes did not linger on Sattva’s unruly braid, or her calloused hands blackened with speeder grease, or the sweat on her patched clothes. If she was the most penniless creature this elegant, clean-clothed man has ever seen, he did not acknowledge it.

“And why is it so important to clean the city, my girl?” he said.

Sattva never had the luxury of being heard, so she crammed every word she ever learned into the span of a minute.

“Because-garbage-mingling-with-living-communities-can-lead-to-an-increase-in-diseases-and-pests-which-are-dangerous-to-living-conditions-and-it-also-smells-awful-and-distracts-people-from-their-daily-lives-and-also-metal-bits-can-be-collected-and-sold-which-is-really-helpful-to-us-and-garbage-in-the-heaps-can-decompose-into-dirt-safely-without-getting-in-the-way-of-the-city,” she said in about half of a breath.

The governor nodded, as if he made any sense of the word jam that plopped off of Sattva’s tongue. His smile grew into a grin as his subordinates behind him took notes.

“And where do you send off this rubbish, my girl?” he said.

“To the heap outside of the city, sir,” says Sattva. “Plastics get sold to passing recyclers, as does the metal. The rest goes into the ravine.”

“My!” said the governor. “Do you sort the garbage?”

“No,” said Sattva. Struggling to retain the governor’s favor, she added, “but I was the one who thought of giving the townspeople all different boxes to sort their trash themselves. To make it a little easier for everyone.”

The governor’s eyes twinkled. Then, he turned to his subordinates.

“Get this young lady more landspeeders and helping hands under her command,” he said. “This is a leader in the making--give her something to lead.”

Bodhi immediately took Sattva’s hand, which was sweaty with the excited nervousness. She gripped his fingers back tightly, and he could almost hear the echo of her pounding heart through her skin.

The governor put a proud hand on Sattva’s shoulder, which suddenly made Bodhi mildly jealous of the affection and approval, even though he could hardly speak above a whisper if the governor would deign to speak to him.

“Sattva Rook, you said?” he said. He squeezed her shoulder. Bodhi held on even tighter, as if anticipating a tug-of-war for his sister. “You will undoubtedly make the Empire a better place.”

Sattva was too stunned to breathe, let alone thank the governor. He gave her one last smile before snapping his fingers, and his right hand man rushed immediately to his side to escort him away, speaking in low tones. When the governor and his men were a ways away, Sattva swiveled to Bodhi, and they gasped for air at the same time. Then, they both raced back home to be the first to tell their parents of what had just happened.

 

Everyone was equal under the Empire. So no one should suffer under the Empire (That is, everyone should suffer an equal amount, and therefore no one would quite notice if they were suffering at all).

The streets straightened themselves out as if to be the most presentable. The Empire had cleaned out the Jedi Temples to be used for city purposes--for the poor to take the rooms, for the halls to be fashioned into schools. Bacta became more accessible to all. Illiteracy dissipated. Everyone was equal under the Empire.

Then, the cracks shone.

Half a year later, Bodhi was racing home from the town square, a crumpled poster in his hand which he just ripped off of the town square wall.  

“Sattva!” he cried out. “Sattva, look at this!”

Sattva was buried under a fort of books. Several tomes tumbled down when she looked up to his heed.

“What now?” she said.

“I said _look_ \--” and Bodhi knocked down another wall of books to show her what was on his hands. Her quick eyes scanned the paper, her eyebrows furrowing as she read.

“Where did you see this?” she said.

“At the town centre, right outside of school,” said Bodhi.

“And you just took this?” Sattva says.

“There are about a hundred of them all over Jedha,” said Bodhi.

“Come with me,” said Sattva.

She and Bodhi climbed onto one of the landspeeders that the governor had lent them for their rubbish duties. Bodhi, ever the better driver, sped through the streets as Sattva barked directions over the wind.

By the time that they reached the school building, there were already crowds gathering along the walls and town squares where these posters had been set up. There were squabbles, and murmurs, nods of approval and hushed fear. Most notably, the alien neighbors gathered closely together, their shoulders hunched at the new decrees printed in bold letters from their hometown governor.

Sattva was the smartest person Bodhi ever knew, but even she needed answers. She raced to the one she admired the most, otherwise known as the Imperial governor.

Of course, even if everyone was equal under the Empire, a girl from the slums could not receive the audience of the governor, so she turned to the next best thing, which were the Imperial professors.

“I don’t understand,” Sattva said. She and Bodhi were sitting in a sweltering teacher’s office in the school building. Her favorite teacher sat in the desk across from them, and his eyes glinted with the steadfast wisdom that they consistently poured into each child, one slogan at a time. “Why must the aliens live separately from us? They’ve been living with us since forever.”

“Not forever, my child,” said the professor, with a patient hum. “If we have always been forever with the nonhumans, would our city still have the distinctions between us today? We would have melded together after generations and generations of living together. No, this cohabitation is fairly recent. Long ago enough, of course, that you would not remember otherwise.”

“That doesn’t make a difference, does it?” Bodhi said. Sattva elbowed him to keep quiet, but Bodhi had trouble following the rules. “My family just moved into a new neighborhood. Should we move out because we haven’t lived there for very long?”

“Bodhi, please,” Sattva said under her breath.

“No, let him ask,” said the professor. “A bright mind should be well exercised.” He flexed his fingers and turned his attention to Bodhi. His sharp gaze from behind his spectacles made Bodhi feel out of place. “No, it does not make a difference. I was merely correcting your sister’s understanding of the galaxy’s history. That is not the reason why the Empire is arranging a change to the demographics in Jedha City. Although I will say this: this relocation is not only beneficial, but also very natural.

“Nonhumans are of course very different from you and I. Their biological differences mean they have different needs and different effects than us. They require sustenance much different than ours, and therefore expel waste that is unnatural and even potentially harmful for us humans.”

“Is it harmful to us?” Bodhi said, his eyes widening. He had never heard of such a thing before. But then again, he only had so few years of school, and had so many left to go.

“Indeed,” said the professor. “New studies from the Imperial capital are showing that nonhuman presence can affect the health of their human neighbors.”

“But all the waste is taken away from the city,” said Sattva. Her thick eyebrows were furrowed in confusion. “Even if it was harmful--it’s not around anymore, see?”

“My dear,” said the professor. “Do you remember the biology lessons you have learnt? What a nonhuman excretes is more than just solids. They exhale, and they spit, and they shed. And how sensitive the human system is! You understand, of course, how allergies work, do you not?”

“Yes,” said Sattva, raising her chin. “My brother is allergic to furry animals and mangian nuts.”

“Exactly,” said the professor. He turned to Bodhi, who hunched his shoulders, but he spoke gently. “What are your allergies like, if I may ask?”

Bodhi swallowed hard. He stole a glance to Sattva, who nodded.

“I sneeze around some animals,” said Bodhi. “And when I eat mangian nuts--well, I never eat them. But once I did when I was really little and I couldn’t breathe.”

“That must have been very frightening,” the professor said sagely. “Have you ever been Kashyyyk before?”

“No,” Bodhi said. “Where is that?”

“A while away from here,” said the professor. “If you had been there, the planet is full of long-furred wookies. If you are allergic to such animals, you would suffer just being near wookies. You might not even be able to breathe, if there are so many and you could not get away. If you lived near them all the time.”

Bodhi swallowed hard. He imagined gasping for air on breathe, his throat swelling and closing in until nothing could come in or out. But at the thought of families being forced out of their home into the wilderness that was the moon Jedha, his heart ached. Surely he could hold his breath forever, and no one would have to suffer for it.

“This is for the protection of people like your little brother, Miss Rook,” said the professor. “Who are suffering in the presence of nonhumans. Perhaps for some people, it is the aliens who expel a different gas than us. Or who have scales rather than skin. They are simply too biologically different for us to _continue_ living together with us, even if we have done so for so long. Just because we have managed does not mean we should keep going.”

As Sattva took a sidelong glance at Bodhi, the uncertainty in her eyes gradually molded into determination. Bodhi felt a sense of safety wash over him under her gaze, even if the professor’s words made too much sense that it was unnerving.

“Do not think of this as an ill, Miss Rook,” said the professor. “This will be easier for the nonhumans just as much. Think of how their languages are so incomprehensible. Their ways of life are simply incompatible to ours. They would do better in places where our ways of life will not have to interfere with each other.”

Sattva struggled for words. She looked out to the window, where Imperial guards were shouting orders at crowds of aliens. Perhaps their hearts would pang with pity, but perhaps the professor had a point--perhaps this _was_ better for all of Jedha, if Sattva believed it was better for Bodhi.

“But to ship them all out of their homes to set up camp on their own somehow outside of the city?” said Sattva. “And to make them leave the city on their own, where there are dangers outside? That is--so harsh. Families might get lost from one another. And many of them cannot walk that long and far. Jedha is a large city, and it will take a long while until anyone can make outside the walls, and far enough from the heaps of rubbish. And then they would be scattered, in all directions.”

The professor leaned forward, his hands folded on the desk before him. His attention made Sattva’s shoulders more square as she commanded the attention for the hope of others.

“Give them a foundation to go on,” said Sattva. “If their government is insisting on separate living, then give them a place to live. Provide that transportation and those homes for them. No one would be lost about where to go. They’re your citizens too.”

The professor smiled. He straightened his spectacles and rose from his seat. He took his comlink from the drawer in his desk.

“You raise a very valid point, Miss Rook,” said the professor. “Indeed. That would be incredibly efficient.”

“And no one would be left homeless all of a sudden,” Sattva said. “Right?”

“You’re very right, my clever girl,” said the professor.

He smiled in a way that made Bodhi hold his breath, which made no sense because he did not think there was any reason why students should be afraid of their teachers. But he did not protest, because Sattva’s eyes brightened, and she was going to change the world, and that was what mattered most.

 

Bodhi watched the Empire’s gild chip away from the top of a myrtle tree.

He watched as the aliens relocated with such efficiency and precision that even the higher-ups of the Empire would nod with impressed approval. By the end of the year, the center was emptied of aliens, several of his classmates now empty chairs, and the streets silent and absent of the duree fruit stand vendor who was branded Nonhuman. The stormtroopers grew more and more in number, like the Empire’s pale fingerprints all over Jedha to claim it for itself.

He watched, and cried out as the alien neighborhood was shoved further and further against the city walls, like a cat left outside in the rain after misbehaving. He saw from the top of a myrtle tree the food trickle into nothingness, the neighborhood thinning out, like watching bloody hands dig for diamonds there was something inherently unjust in these riches.

And yet his voice quavered to cry out, because he had shoes on his feet, he had hands that could hold a pen and create a universe, he had a sister who was chasing her dreams because the Empire gave her dreams, he had. His voice quavered to cry out, because it was the voice of a child, who saw the Empire as a savior and a friend, and now it was like learning for the first time that his mother could indeed be cruel, or that his father could indeed be a coward.

“This is not what I meant,” Sattva whispered, watching as the city thinned before her eyes. The speeders laden with aliens cramped together nearly skimmed the road from the burden. “This is not what I hoped for.”

So when the first explosion hit Jedha, he fell from a myrtle tree.

It would come to his knowledge, in due time, that it was Saw Gerrera who blew up the town center, toppling the Jedi statues and shattering the Empire tanks. It would also come to his knowledge, in due time, that Saw Gerrera trusted no one, especially the ones who help him, and the price for that knowledge was his own mind, but that would be a long while from now.

He fell and twisted his ankle, and cried out because the ground was shaking and his head was ringing and suddenly the city that pried open its pearls to him was shattering into shells and ash. He fell, hit his head on the dust, and as he blearily raised his head to see the stormtroopers pour through the streets and yell _get down, get down! PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD AND STAY DOWN_ , he realized that he could not recognize his home, not anymore.

Sattva came running out of their home, crying out his name when she saw him fell. The explosions rocked her off her feet, and the stormtroopers shoved her head into the dust when she did not prostrate herself soon enough. From under the myrtle tree, Bodhi squeezed his eyes shut as Saw Gerrera made an earthquake out of metal, and his neighborhood shook all around him, threatening to topple.

“Down with the Empire!” the rebels would cry out, their voices somehow rising above the explosions they wreaked. “Down with the--!” And whatever else they said, Bodhi could not hear, because the noise made his ears ring until he could not lift his head.

The insurgents made Bodhi’s core cold with fear. Whenever he heard the first of the explosions, he would dive inside, find Sattva, and cover her head, because he was growing taller and becoming the man of the family, and he would curse the insurgents for tearing apart his home for the sake of crying out for change. You have to tell people how to change if you want change, he wanted to holler at them, but their retorts only made his ears bleed. (In due time, he would give up the life he knew for these insurgents, but he does not need to know that, yet)

Sattva wrote to the Governor, pleading for him to change his policies, asking for his audience. She penned essays and gathered people’s names to petition for difference. She stood on the steps of the city hall until Bodhi had to carry her back because her bones were shaking from lack of water and food. The Governor did not recognize her. It did not need to.

The Empire did not write decrees in response. They did not rattle their neatly partitioned city so that everything would fall back into place, they did not call out to the rebels and call for compromise. They took up their arms and fired, breaking glass and shattering bones, and Bodhi would grit his teeth at the Empire and think, I expected better from you. You taught me to be better than this. (In due time, he would listen to his heart, and know that there was nothing to hope for, and there never had been, but he does not need to know that, yet)

“This isn’t what I meant,” Sattva cried. But the Empire heard what they wanted to hear from her, and poisoned itself.

 

One image that still clings to Bodhi’s memory is a strange one. He cannot put a finger on what it is, or why it is, and he can only blame Bor Gullet to ease his nerves. But it is an image that breaks his heart, and then sours it.

He remembers ruins, an entire street ripped apart. He hears the cacophonous hum of the ships loading carts and carts of kyber crystals from the city. He smells blood, as it is a sharply distinct smell even if he does not remember where it comes from. The myrtle tree that had grown there since he was a child is uprooted, its blooms nothing but ashes, and the branches broken and stiff, planted in the midst of limbs growing from the rubble in rigor mortis.

He remembers his heart shattering, and then mustering itself up to feel nothing. It was a secure place to be, a false promise that nothing will be painful again. He remembers not knowing who was to blame, so he bares his teeth against the world.

In the midst of the rubble, Sattva was dancing. Her eyes were closed and her feet were bare, her sandals placed neatly to the side on top of a fallen wall. She waved her arms to the beat of a rhythmic grief, and she kept her step light so she did not trip over any bodies. Her lithe hips swayed in a way that was almost scandalous as she danced among the hollowed city. There was blood on her clothes, but Bodhi had a ghost of a memory that it was not hers.

He stood there, silently watching, feeling as if his body were hollow and he was actually a ghost watching his sister’s heart and soul break before his eyes that she had no words or arguments or decisions left to turn to. One, two, three, one, two, three. Sattva’s lips moved, mouthing the lyrics of a muted song while her feet glided across the broken ground. He could almost hear the music she danced to, even if the Holy City was frightfully silent.

“Leave this city,” she would tell him, at one point when all energy for grieving was spent. “Fly away from here, Bodhi. If there's nothing left.”

Bodhi blames Bor Gullet for a memory which has neither a beginning nor an end. But he suspects it is simply because it has happened too many times to recall one specific mourning.

 

When Bodhi was a young man, he signed up for the academy to be a starfighter pilot. The children of Jedha were born to touch the stars, his sister once said, and he did not believe her. The children of Jedha were buried under dust-coated rubble and desert sand. If they were to touch the stars, it was the supernovas that shook this city, and left soot where bones stood. He did not believe his sister when she said he would touch the stars; he believed in rattling them until the insurgents fell out, and shoo them off, and they would leave them all the hell alone.

“Give me more paper,” said Sattva.

Sattva was long and far away from the little girl who used boxes to protect her brother from cutting his hand. Back then, there was everything to change and nothing to do. Now, everything has changed and yet there was a gripping sense of incompleteness. The Rooks were no longer penniless; their names described a scholar and a student, a mastermind and an adventurer, civil servants doing their duty for the empire which gave them purpose. If only their work mattered.

Bodhi obliged, giving Sattva a fresh sheet of paper and sweeping her crumpled refuse into one of the rubbish bins. Sattva ran her inked hands over her face, which was pinched in concentration. She had work at the court in half an hour, and she still had not put on her proper clothes.

“Sattva,” said Bodhi.

He settled in the stool across from her desk. He was taller than her now, and he itched for action like any other boy his age. The Empire was a strange and needy creature, and like many boys who grew up with the Rook children in Jedha, he would answer the call of the dragon. It was not the pins and medals of a starfighter pilot he longed for, although the idea of a clean and starched uniform was tantalizing in a city of dust and flesh. Instead, it was the silent insurance that the Empire would look at his family and declare them acceptable, if their son was serving the Empire while their daughter was, in one way or another, causing them a headache.

“That’s the last of our paper,” he said.

Sattva clenched her teeth. She did not look up from the sleek lines of writing that she swiftly spread across the paper. She wrote every thought, complaint, compromise, and suggestion she had to the Empire with such command of the letters as if the alphabet had been built solely for her.

“I thought we had more in the cupboard.”

“You used that for the petition last month.”

Sattva took in a deep breath.

“I’ll get more from the shop tonight,” she said.

“You can’t,” said Bodhi. “The shop was blown up yesterday.”

Sattva looked up sharply. Flyaway strands of her dark hair stuck to her forehead, which was balmy from the effort of trying to make a difference.

“What the hell is anyone doing attacking a paper shop?” she said. “Was it the Stormtroopers or the insurgents?”

The ground at Jedha shook daily. Saw Gerrera’s insurgents had already sent all the Jedi Temple statues crumbling, and streets were shattered into dirt and dust. There were rumors that they hid amongst the alien neighborhoods in the city. Bodhi could not make up his mind whether they were brave or horrific. Sattva, on the other hand, would throw open her window and shout herself hoarse at the bombs and gunfire to let off some steam.

“What sort of difference does it make?” said Bodhi.

“None,” said Sattva. She dropped her pen and sank in her seat. “Fire is still fire and burns everything up.”

Bodhi took in a breath and reached for Sattva’s hand. How many times she went up to the city hall, arms full of papers and mouth full of protests, only for the doors to never budge when she called for them. Or rallied in the town square, crying out to be heard with her neighbors and friends, to silent halls that might as well have been empty. The Empire which once lapped up all her cleverness tactlessly chose this moment to be deaf--the Empire that was once like a childhood fairy tale superhero was, as all fairy tales ended up being with age, more daunting than he remembered.

“Their people are crying out to them,” said Sattva. “Why will the Empire not listen?”

Bodhi gently massaged her tense, cramping hands, which would stay up all night to write, and write, and write for the city that she served. He kissed those knotted knuckles, which were no longer chapped and soiled but inkstained and shaking. He kissed the heart she wore on her sleeve that swelled and beat for an Empire that she put her faith in.

Still, it did not stop her. When she finally finished writing, every line was cramped and blackened both sides of the last sheet of paper they had left. There was only just enough room for a signature.

She passed the pen to him. He hesitated.

“They will not listen,” said Bodhi.

“Will that stop you from speaking?” she said.

He took in a breath and took the pen from her. In small, careful letters, Bodhi Rook wrote his name with the alphabet that the Empire tried to manipulate for their own. Under the Empire, everyone is equal, they taught him to write. He had to teach himself how to write his own name, back in the day.

Sattva signed as well and held out the letter. It was legible to a point, and only to someone who cared enough to try. Children still cried out for the parents who abandoned them, though; Sattva tacked the letter to the door of the city hall, and starved on the steps in protest.

 

The Empire was a friend, a savior. The Empire was a disappointment, a fear, a deep hurt with no fingers to point to. The Empire was a redeemed hero, a father that repented. The Empire loved its people.

“The Governor will hear from the people,” Sattva said.

Her eyes shone with tears of relief. In her hair, under her fingernails, in her chapped lips and dark shadows under her eyes were the years and years of fighting, protesting, compromising, and in that moment all those lines and shadows passed away. She took Bodhi’s wrist gently, squeezing it. He broke his silent shock to wrap his arms around her tightly, gasping for breath.

“They’ll hear our voices,” Sattva said. Her fingers dug into Bodhi’s back. She spoke rapidly, as if there was just not enough time in her lungs to breathe out everything she needed to tell him. “They agreed to recruit academics with ideas to improve the Empire. We’ll be taken to their station where the leaders are, and we’ll work with them to make everything better.”

Bodhi was so, so proud of his Sattva. His heart could burst. The Empire loved its people. The Empire would be saved. The Empire would save its people. He believed in the Empire, because he believed in his sister. He knew, as he held her close, that he would give up his everything to the Empire that was his sister.

“Bodhi, I’m going to fix all this,” said Sattva. “I’m going to make this galaxy wonderful.”

 

One year later, Bodhi made a choice.

He made it quietly, and alone. He could not tell Sattva. All communication that was not in the form of kyber crystals was cut off even before she had left, abandoning Jedha to its war-torn prison because it was too much risk for any communication to be intercepted by Saw Gerrera’s insurgents. All comlinks to the Death Star had no time to waste on a hopeless case, especially now that it is less of a battle station and more of a terrible weapon.

He would not tell his family, or his friends from the Academy. He spent his last night buying his friends a round of drinks at the cantina, and helping his mother repair the squeaking front door. He packed light, hoping bleakly that Sattva would return to Jedha sometime to assure their mother that her children had not abandoned her for a cause, even though it is partly true.

He flew his ship to Eadu, and then away, and all the while he wanted to beg Galen Erso to pass a message to Sattva. Sir, he almost said to the scientist. Sir, if you could, please find a Sattva Rook on that monster which you built. Tell her I love her. Tell her I'm sorry. She boarded that station for me. I am not betraying the Empire for her. But Bodhi knew better than to let his sentiments kill her; chances were that the Empire was not above torturing family for information.

One year since he told his sister he was proud of her, he made the choice to oppose the Empire, and oppose her. He could only hope he would die in the process before she would ever have the chance to feel betrayed.

 _This is for you, Galen,_ he had thought on the beaches of Scarif, before racing through fire to give the Rebel Alliance the knife they would stab in Sattva’s back for him. It was a cursory thought, a desperate push to make him run, which slipped past his fingers before he could reel it back; he never felt more like a traitor until then.

-

“I just want to let you know,” Jyn says, “that you’re going to get the both of us killed.”

Bodhi generally keeps a running log of such instances. He is not reckless enough to dismiss them as a regular occurrence, like brushing his teeth or holding his breath. Although that is not to say that he is not reckless at all, for this list of flirting with death is starting to look impressive. He is hacking into the Rebel Alliance’s database, after all.

“Stealing a Rebel ship for the second time,” says Jyn. “It hasn’t even been a week.”

“They don’t make it incredibly difficult,” says Bodhi.

With several swift taps on the datapad, he disables the guards of one of the smaller fighter jets. Then he erases it entirely from the database, unable to be noted as missing if it is never there in the first place. Jyn furrows her eyebrows as she watches all of this from behind Bodhi, keeping a shifty gaze at the door of the control room in case anyone walk in on them.

“They have a database to keep log of all their ships similar to the Empire’s,” Bodhi says. “That’s something that the Empire and the Rebellion have in common, I suppose. Operational management.”

“Comforting,” says Jyn. “Why didn’t we do this the first time?”

“That ship we used is far too big, it was noticeable regardless,” says Bodhi. He clenches his teeth. “And at that time, we reckoned we’d come back anyway.”

Jyn gives a sidelong look at Bodhi, but does not say anything. Bodhi feels the guilt seep in through the cracks of his deceivingly solid fortitude. He does not want to guilt her into helping him, but he cannot help but feel that he has emotionally compromised her by sharing to her. It may be difficult to say no for someone who has never had the opportunity to say yes for most of her life.

“The Alliance might not let you come back,” Jyn says.

“Maybe if they knew what I was fighting for,” says Bodhi.

“They won’t care about that,” Jyn says.

Bodhi opens his mouth to protest, but then he looks at her eyes and swallows his contradictions. No, he cannot doubt that. And ultimately, unlike Galen Erso, he has no concrete proof that Sattva is of any worth to the Rebellion’s cause. Their chances are painstakingly thin.

Neither he nor Jyn speak as they sneak to the fighter jets kept in the landing pads. Setting a contained fire in the other side of the landing pad keeps eyes away, and the cover of night will keep the wool over them. These model of fighter jets are silent; Bodhi remembers that much from the days in the academy, even if he never got a career in one.

“All set?” says Jyn. “You know how to fly this?”

“Ships are ships after you’ve been in a couple,” says Bodhi.

Neither of them make a definite move to sit at the cockpit. He takes a deep breath, and misses Jyn already. As much as he may yearn for it, he cannot ask for company.

“If Cassian or the others ask where I’ve gone,” he says, “tell them. Please, try not to make me sound like a traitor. But I understand if there’s no other way to put it.”

“Are you telling me to stay behind?” says Jyn.

Jyn stares at him long and hard as if she is offended for his suggestion that she let him be alone. Bodhi must admire that stalwart steadfastness in a woman that the Alliance had otherwise deemed insufferably selfish in the beginning. He has done nothing to earn this from her other than drive a spaceship and talk on the radio, and Jyn is not the kind who would throw her trust generously at anyone who did her a solid. So he can only conclude that perhaps she does this out of empathy.

“Are you telling me that you wouldn’t want to?” says Bodhi.

Jyn’s lips tighten into a thin line. If she has found a place to belong, in the Rebellion, in their captain, then it shows painfully in her eyes. If the Alliance will hate Bodhi for loving his sister too much, then they will not forgive Jyn either if she helps him. Bodhi looks away, fiddling unnecessarily with seatbelt straps. He runs out of straps to double check before she climbs into the cockpit in the co-pilot’s seat. Bodhi freezes.

“What?” he says.

“You think you can fly a jet on your own after a concussion?” she says.

“I’ve had worse,” says Bodhi.

Jyn narrows her eyes. Bodhi doesn’t understand why she does not believe him.

“You might get lost on your way back,” says Jyn.

“I’ve flown the galaxy for six years,” says Bodhi.

“Don’t these sorts of jets need two people to fly?”

“Only if you’re shooting at the same time.”

“Don’t make me need an excuse,” Jyn says.

Bodhi falls silent. She may refuse to give one but he cannot bear to go without one. The Alliance may shoot down their jet for coming within distance to the Death Star, and he cannot bring himself to sacrifice Jyn’s life for the sake of his sister’s, just as he would not sacrifice his sister’s for the sake of the universe.

But Jyn straps herself into the seat and pulls the goggles over her eyes, and she stares expectantly at Bodhi. And Bodhi knows that this is emotionally speaking a long while ago, and even Cassian would probably deny having ever said it even though he wasn’t necessarily wrong at the time, but Bodhi feels a flare of indignation that Cassian ever implied that Jyn cared for no one but herself.

He climbs into the pilot’s seat next to her and closes the entrance. His heart is racing with the wild, thrilling hope that he can save at least one person from his family. He sets the jet to take off, and dares not to look back.

True to his word, the jet is one of the more silent, stealthy models. It peels off from the rest of the line of fighter jets under the Rebel Alliance’s thumb, and sets to hyperspace before anyone can catch a pinprick of it in the sky and mistake it for a star. Bodhi knows a thing or two about going unnoticed.

“Teach me how to fly one of these days,” Jyn says.

Bodhi laughs.

“If we’ve got nowhere to land after this, I will,” he says.

He fiddles with the jet’s radio signals, trying to tune in to any connection of the Empire’s. The situation with the Death Star is that for all its lack of aerodynamics, the blatantly round and unsubtle Death Star can _move_ , and quite efficiently, around the galaxy, which required finding the damn thing. Bodhi supposed that he should applaud Galen for the design, except Galen would prefer less of a standing ovation for his work but rather more of a firing squad for his deed.

“What are you doing?” Jyn says.

“Empire speaks in code over radio,” says Bodhi. “Especially in regards to their coordinates.”

“You know their codes?”

Bodhi smiles wryly.

“Thank you for forgetting that I used to be everything Imperial,” he says.

Jyn raises her eyebrows. Bodhi settles with one frequency that is promising, although all it is is the soft muttering of some hapless Imperial captain waiting for orders. He still feels Jyn’s stare hot and heavy against his cheek.

“What got you to defect?” Jyn says.

Bodhi does not take his eyes off of the viewport.

“Galen,” says Bodhi.

“No,” says Jyn, and her voice is hard. “Whatever man my father was, there couldn’t be any possible way he could convince you to turn against your sister.”

Bodhi smiles humorlessly.

“When you put it that way, I suppose not,” says Bodhi. “But like I said before. I would not have had any idea of how to defect if Galen did not give me something to do.”

“Right,” says Jyn.

They fly in silence. Bodhi wishes he could be something more like Cassian or Chirrut for Jyn, both whom have a better grasp on small talk that seem to satisfy Jyn well enough. Bodhi is used to flying alone, humming to himself, counting the credits in his pocket to see what trinket or gift from a faraway planet he can afford for Sattva to cheer her up and show her, remember, the Empire isn’t so bad, remember, you’ve done so much, my sister. Now, he had no credits to his name, and he doubted Jyn would be very keen on hymns from Jedha.

“What was he like, my father?” Jyn says. A beat. “Don’t answer that.”

Jyn craves small talk no more than Bodhi does, so he is fairly certain that she truly wants to know.

“Are you sure?” says Bodhi.

“No,” says Jyn. “He’s a stranger to me already. Hearing it from you will only make that more so.” She fidgets with her goggles, before settling with letting them sit tight against her hairline. “Tell me about your sister, then.”

Bodhi’s heart jolts. He should have expected it, as he had walked himself into this corner, but it is uneasy nonetheless. He does not think he has enough words in his vocabulary to tell her anything about Sattva.

“I don’t mind dropping you back onto Yavin 4, but isn’t the timing a little off to doubt what I’m doing?” he says.

“I’m not asking you to prove that she’s a nice person worth saving,” says Jyn.

Bodhi hums softly. She does not look at him when she asks, which means she is asking for solely her own needs, not his. There is only a certain common denominator between Sattva and Galen that would connect these two strings of conversation together.

“Aren’t you, though?” says Bodhi.

Jyn’s jaw twitches. She does not like to be caught red-handed with her burning questions and raw vulnerability. Bodhi knows Jyn in person for a week and in theory for the two years that he knew Galen; he has figured out how to navigate her the same way he has mapped out the stars, noting which ones burn the most furiously and which ones have died long ago.

“What’s she doing on the Death Star?” she says.

“She was invited by the Empire to collaborate with the leaders,” says Bodhi. “Some of Jedha’s cleverest and passionate subjects were invited.”

“The Empire’s government isn’t in the Death Star, is it?” says Jyn.

“No,” says Bodhi. “I do not think they would have extended that lucrative of an offer to several academics to collaborate with the Emperor.”

Jyn does not respond. Bodhi wishes that she would like Sattva, but he knows that she would not. Jyn does not waste her effort liking people whom she does not have to die with.

“She wants to make the Empire a better place,” says Bodhi.

Jyn snorts. It makes Bodhi’s heart twinge instinctively.

“Do you believe that she can?” says Jyn.

Bodhi does not readily answer; he does not want to put it into words. He thinks that his presence in the Rebellion would have been an answer in and of itself.

“It’s not whether she can that is the question,” Bodhi says. “It’s how she’s doing it that is the question.”

Someone on the radio speaks and Bodhi holds a hand out to keep Jyn’s silence. He listens carefully, noting coordinates, recalling codes, then pausing because numbers and letters are scrambling in his mind. 48A, they keep repeating, 48A, and he knows that he once learned that code, he knows that he at one point remembered it, but that which came before Bor Gullet and that which came after are clawed and shredded and tossed like grains of sand in a storm, and the longer he tries to concentrate the only thing that echoes in his head is names, names, names. Sattva, Jyn, Cassian, Mother and Father, Sattva, Chirrut, K-2, that was a name, wasn’t it, Baze, Sattva.

“She must know that you have rebelled by now, then,” says Jyn.

Bodhi wiped his lips with the back of his hand. Jyn is merely echoing the maelstrom that was his soul before he took the hologram message from Galen’s hands. It still feels like a punch in the chest.

“I was just a cargo pilot,” Bodhi says.

“Everyone was searching for you,” says Jyn. “Both sides.” A beat. “You think she’ll be happy to see you?”

“I don’t know,” Bodhi says. He refuses to look Jyn in the eyes, and resists telling her off for being a terrible co-pilot for keeping her eyes off of the viewport. “We both want the same thing. She wants to improve the Empire by helping it. I want to improve the Empire by dismantling it.”

They are overconfident words with little substance behind them. The truth is that the moment he chose to defect from the Empire was wrought with so much doubt that he tore the paper from the walls of his home, strip by strip, because if he screamed someone would notice and raise suspicion. He crumpled the posters he used to adore as a child and pierced his fingers through them because he couldn’t breathe, because he could betray the Empire in a heartbeat, but he would die rather than betray his sister.

Somehow, his heart beats still, and the universe gives him the tantalizing possibility that he may not have to compromise.

“How long has she been working with the Empire?” says Jyn.

“All our lives,” Bodhi says. “Since we were children. It wasn’t that hard. They taught us how to read.”

It isn't that his memories of the Empire of the past is now irreparable. He still remembers an Empire who valued his sister, and saw the two Rooks as more than just slum rats. It's that he also remembers the cries of prisoners or traitors and the fear that the Empire rattles in everyone's bones. The Empire is not a monster to him, but he chooses to fight it anyway. Sometimes he crudely wishes that the Empire made the choice easy for him by slaughtering his family and pushing him into rebelling without a shadow of a doubt, so of course they would wait until after he finally defected to destroy Jedha City.

“Even if you come to her,” says Jyn, “how do you know she would be willing to come?”

“If she wants to die a fiery death in an exploding Death Star, she has the freedom to choose,” Bodhi says. He turns to Jyn. “Hard to make a choice, wouldn't it?”

“Not if she would rather go down with her ship,” says Jyn.

“It isn't her ship,” says Bodhi. “And it isn't her cause either. It was always about Jedha. She gives everything for her city.”

“So did her vote count when the Empire blew up Jedha?” says Jyn.

Bodhi clenches his teeth. Something shifts, like a fractured bone that needs to be set, and the pain is blinding for a second. Then it is numbing, and dizzying, and the bone is set but it no longer fits in the right place anymore.

“I will have to ask her when I have the chance,” says Bodhi.

Jyn shoots him an incredulous look. Bodhi feels a flare of indignation at her anticipation of a different response.

“Are you having second thoughts about coming?” Bodhi says.

“No,” says Jyn, and Bodhi knows that she means it. “Just--”

And she slows into silence. Bodhi has a nagging feeling that she is withdrawing, building some sort of glass wall in between them. Not that there is much intimacy between them before, other than a shared near-death experience, and the silent acknowledgment that they only had about one degree of separation.

“Can I ask you something?” says Bodhi.

Jyn does not answer, but she does not protest either. Bodhi continues.

“Galen--your father--he never said why he was around to build the Death Star,” says Bodhi. “But you could just tell he didn't want to be there.”

“Any answer I can give you is from his own words from that hologram,” says Jyn. “I have nothing of value I could add.”

She says it more like a threat than an answer.

“I was going to ask what happened to you,” he says.

Jyn looks even less welcoming of this turn of conversation. Bodhi expects this; only Cassian has any real chance of having an idea of what Jyn was like pre-mission, since by the time Bodhi had the mindset to comprehend his surroundings Jedha was falling apart and he had to direct them to Eadu.

“You don't have to answer if you don't want to,” Bodhi says. “It’s just that--I felt like maybe--”

“Maybe I came along because I understood you,” Jyn says.

Bodhi does not verbally confirm it, but his shoulders relax. Jyn takes in a deep breath.

“I do,” she says simply. A beat. “But there's a difference.”

“Yeah?” says Bodhi.

Jyn smiles wryly. It is the saddest that Bodhi has seen her.

“I didn't love him anymore until I found out that he hated the Empire,” she says. “And that he loved me.”

Bodhi opens his mouth, but holds his tongue and all the echoes encouragements and promises of ‘love deep within the heart’ and ‘you hated him because you loved him’ and other vague comforts that she alone would know whether or not they are true.

“And I'm arguably compromising the entire rebellion for my own needs,” says Bodhi. “So neither of us are good at this.”

Jyn lets out a short laugh. Bodhi has no other defense for either of them. Choices are choices.

“I'm going to search around for the station,” says Bodhi. “Why don't you rest while I take first watch?”

Jyn snorts. She also looks incredibly relieved that he does not continue the subject. That alone makes him worry that he could have afforded to press deeper. But she already turns her head and feigns sleep, and he hums to soothe the silence.

 

Cassian Andor is not an overbearing man. He is a spy, and spies are not equipped to mind their own business. Spies cannot afford to not keep a tab on every variable and every person no matter the hour. He would therefore never describe himself as overwhelming so much as he would say that he does his job.

So when he is finally released from the medical bay--or at least declares no longer bedridden--he immediately tracks down the rest of his team. It is not that he expected to wake up from his bacta tank session to Jyn sobbing at his presumed deathbed, throwing her arms around him in relief and declaring that she waited by his side for the however many days that he was incapacitated, but he was a little more than crestfallen that she was not around at all to begin with. He hobbles around the base, demanding from fellow rebels where his companions are, only to find that Chirrut is still in the bacta while Jyn and Bodhi are incredibly elusive.

“They haven't been sent on another mission already, have they?” he asks Baze, whom he found reassembling his machine blaster in the mechanic bay. “There is no way that they got off of Scarif unscathed.”

“The Alliance would send you on a mission this afternoon if they had one,” Baze says, his hands blackened with oil from the weaponry. “And you wouldn't protest one bit.”

“That's not the point,” Cassian says.

Baze raises his eyebrows but holds his tongue from waggling some gruff retort. This irks Cassian even more than any snarky comment, because it implies that Baze thinks Cassian cannot handle it.

“They may be lying low,” Baze says. “Maybe they are spending time in the jungle.”

“The jungle is no place to recuperate,” Cassian says. He frowns. “What do you mean by lie low?”

Baze grunts as he readjusts the axle into his jigsaw puzzle of a blaster.

“I was not there,” says Baze. “I was watching over Chirrut, but people here have nothing else to do but talk when there are no battles to be won. Jyn and Bodhi spoke out in the middle of a meeting.”

“About what?” says Cassian.

“About destroying the Death Star,” Baze says. “They stood against it.”

Cassian stopped short. There is a sudden flare of betrayal, because spies can never give anyone the benefit of the doubt, and he cannot use any warmth or sentiment to guarantee that someone he trusts is truly on his side. But he recalls the fire in Jyn’s eyes and the steadiness in Bodhi’s voice and he pushes aside the spy in him in an attempt to leave room for him to be a friend.

“That must be just rumors then,” says Cassian. “They knew since the beginning that that was what we were getting the plans for.”

“The weapon, yes,” says Baze. “The battle station full of people, not so much. The Alliance neglects to describe the full details of their plans, I have gathered.”

If Baze is making a subtle comment to the fact that Cassian had orders to kill Galen Erso while everyone else remained oblivious to it, Cassian does not take offense from it. But Cassian has never taken into consideration that either Jyn or Bodhi are that idealistic to try to take the higher ground in the middle of a newly declared war. As much as Cassian would love to defend it, he cannot deny that the Rebel Alliance can be just as paranoid and sweeping in its generalizations as the Empire is. Saw Gerrera is merely an example.

“And you?” Cassian says. “Are you against it?”

Baze lets out a short laugh.

“I am a freelance assassin who was raised all my life to guard the Force and honor the Force of every living creature, wicked or good,” says Baze. “What I believe is irrelevant. It adapts and sheds it skin. I decline to make a decision based off of it.”

As Cassian turns to leave, however, Baze speaks up again.

“But I've always preferred looking the people in the eye if I must kill them,” says Baze. “The ones who destroyed my home are not meant to be imitated.”

Cassian pauses, his mouth open to respond, only to find that he himself does not know what he should consider right. And Baze has already disengaged from the conversation, drilling bolts into his blaster that fill the bay with scraping metal. So Cassian leaves.

Cassian already has a sinking feeling when Baze was catching him up of where Jyn and Bodhi may be. As inexplicably interlinked as he feels towards them, he does not truly know them. But all he has to do is recall Jyn scaling the cliffs of an Imperial base for the sake of her father, and Bodhi who was subjected to torture for the rebellion and he still did not reject them, and realize how extreme his friends will go for what they believe in.

He catches the tampering of the Alliance’s log of jets relatively quickly, but he grudgingly admires Bodhi’s handiwork nonetheless, since the Rebel administrators keeping track of their incoming and outgoing traffic have not caught the absence of a fighter jet that allegedly does not exist. He wants to laugh, despite the gravitas of the situation, because he cannot imagine what effective good Jyn and Bodhi expect to do with a ship that can fit three people at most. He also feels a pinprick of indignation, because with all the orders given to him by the Alliance, he still would have dropped everything to help them if they had asked.

No matter. He finds a comlink and rakes through the humming stars and lingering radio waves for the two idiots he has claimed responsibility for.

 

 _“Approaching Alderaan from the coordinate 48A. Clear the path._ ”

“ _Affirmative.”_

Bodhi is nearly certain that this is the radiowave he is looking for. Why the Death Star would be crossing that path, he does not know.

Jyn has actually fallen asleep on the copilot seat. He is not surprised--he doubts she slept in the medical bay, since before Scarif. Really, he doubts that she has truly slept in years, not without a blaster at hand and a steady expectation of nightmares. The fact that she sleeps soundly with the goggles strapped to her forehead and her hand holding up her head rather than a knife makes Bodhi feel a surge of protectiveness and protection in equal measure. He has not done enough to win her trust, he knows. Vice versa, even. But she came to help him save his sister, and in some wild gesture it feels as if he has suddenly gained one.

Sattva would like her, he concludes. They are hardly alike, not similar enough to be total opposites. But he imagines his sister meeting his friends and his smile grows.

Coordinate 48A in Imperial code, not far from Alderaan, is a little ways off for their small ship, which gives Bodhi a little bit of time to figure out what in the Force’s name he was doing. He has never been delegated any sort of route to the Death Star, so he does not know its ports or openings, or its security. He does not have any system that can announce to the Death Star that they are on a doomed ship and to flee before their weapon is rendered useless. He does not even know if anything he could come up with could work.

But he refuses not to try; his sister is all he has left. He does not know where his family or home are, but as much as he can convince himself that they are simply too far away to reach, or that Jedha still stands and he is the one who must keep the distance, and his family is still breathing somewhere in this galaxy, even if it is not by his side--he knows that he will never see them again. The pill is easier to swallow if he can convince himself that it is because he must hide forever as a new rebel, to protect them, and they could still eat frozen duree and meet their friends at the city market as long as he never speaks to them again. Nothing can disprove it to him--no body, no memorial, no trace of a war-torn home left. And he will have his sister again--he will not be alone.

But Jyn raises a point that Bodhi fears; that Sattva would choose the Empire over him. Even though she had first chosen the Empire _for_ him, he cannot guarantee that the year away from him has changed her heart. He had not realized until well after the fact how deeply the Empire had indoctrinated them, shaping them into perfect little soldiers out of wood that they will eventually burn for kindling. If anyone would convince Sattva that Jedha City must be destroyed, it would be the Empire.

“ _Q7937 to battle station. Path is cleared.”_

Bodhi clenches his jaw. Even if the Empire has twisted his sister, he will drag her out of that Death Star kicking and screaming if he must. He would rather break her heart than let her die.

Then, his comlink buzzed with life.

It jolts Jyn out of her sleep. She wipes the hair from her face which clings to the corner of her lip, eyes already sharp and her metaphorical claws already bared.

“Are we there?” she says.

“Comlink is calling,” says Bodhi. “I don't know who that would be.”

“Has someone already caught on with what we are doing?”Jyn says.

“Maybe,” says Bodhi. “Keep quiet. I'm guilty by default, but if they hear you they'll charge you with being a traitor as well.”

Jyn scowls, but she nods. Bodhi reaches over to answer the comlink. He doesn't speak at first, waiting for any indication that the person on the other line is ready to spit fire.

“Jyn?” Bodhi’s heart jolts when he realizes belatedly that he never considered this outcome. “Bodhi? Are you there?”

“Cassian!” Jyn says, completely disregarding Bodhi’s ten-second-old warning.

“Where the _hell_ are you?” Cassian says.

“Classified,” says Bodhi. “You’re awake!”

“Are you all right?” says Jyn.

“If you waited maybe four hours before you went in a private mission, maybe you'd have known that yourself,” says Cassian. “What are you doing on a stolen ship?”

Jyn opens her mouth, but Bodhi shakes his head. He is keenly aware of how authority can function.

“Classified,” says Bodhi.

“I'm being serious,” says Cassian. “I know you deleted the ship from our logs and tracker. This is about the Death Star.”

“It's neither a Rebel Alliance matter nor an Imperial matter,” says Bodhi.

“I'm speaking to you as a friend, Bodhi,” says Cassian. “Not as a rebel captain. Do you have the slightest idea of how dangerous this is?”

“Does danger ever make a difference to you?” Jyn says.

“You're going to the Death Star, aren't you?” says Cassian. “This isn't about the rebellion. This is about you two. You’re going to get yourselves killed. What do you think the Death Star is going to do, letting a rebel ship anywhere near it?”

“We have what they don't have,” says Bodhi.

“A lack of self-preservation?” Cassian says.

The coordinate is approaching. From the distance, Bodhi can see Alderaan like a small ember. He shifts the jet’s gears to a higher speed.

“Is the station near here?” Jyn says.

“Their coordinates point to here,” says Bodhi. “Soon we’ll be within their radio reach.”

“What are you trying to do?” Cassian says. “What are you trying to contact the Death Star for?”

“Strap some pilots to some jets to come over here, Cassian,” says Jyn. “Once the Death Star is evacuated, we’ll need pilots to destroy it immediately.”

“Excuse me?” says Cassian. “Who is evacuating the Death Star? Listen--where are you?”

“Coordinate--what was it? 48A,” says Jyn.

“ _Preparing Alderaan, affirmative_.”

“What is the Death Star doing so close to--?”

Bodhi shifts the jet just a little to the right, and then his stomach turns.

“Hell!” he cries out.

It is like a flash of sick, green lightning. Bodhi only barely catches a glimpse of it gathering at the Death Star’s hollow before it streams towards Alderaan. He only has a second to let his instincts kick in and set the jet down on a nosedive the moment the ray crushes into Alderaan, and consumes the planet in a fiery halo.

“Shit!” Jyn says. “Shit, shit, _shit_!”

“What’s going on?” Cassian says, frantic. “Are you two all right? What happened?”

The wave of fire barely misses their ship as Bodhi steers, just dodging the flames. The aftershock sets the ship hurtling nonetheless, control tearing right out of Bodhi’s hands.

“Alderaan’s been hit!” Jyn screams into the comlink. “Cassian--the Death Star has attacked Alderaan! It’s gone!”

In a second that passes too slowly, Bodhi remembers Jedha.

There had been a heat wave that first liquidized the organs of everyone in his city--friends, probably, his uncles and aunts and cousins, his parents.

It then boiled the flesh down into nothing, as if it was just salt, and bones became steam, and there is no proof that anyone had ever been alive.

There is no proof that anyone had ever died.

There is no proof--Bodhi remembers. It’s so much to remember and so little to believe, until it is hurtling in the form of a green light and setting Alderaan on fire.

There is no proof--except Alderaan is nothing but the incredible force that is hurling their ship far into the reaches of the stars, what is left of its rich mountain ranges and lakes and canyons now burning asteroids coming far too close.

There is only memory, and it comes too alive in Bodhi’s mind, all the while he is gripping tight on the controllers trying to dodge the broken bits of planet that are flying with the force of several hundred miles per hour. An entire planet and tens of billions of people, and the history of hundreds of trillion people, are gone, and his sister is on the ship that is responsible.

 _Where was Sattva when your home burned to nothingness, Bodhi_?

Oh sister, where are you?

A piece of Alderaan the size of a mountain shuttles towards the ship. Bodhi lets out a yell turning the ship sharply to face away from it. But it is too huge, there is no room to dodge in time as it comes too fast, too soon. It will crush them. He needs to set the ship to hyperspace. He has no time. Without the proper momentum, the ship could jerk into hyperspace too soon and snap all their necks. But it is a chance and they have it.

“Jyn!”

He takes a breath, throws the ship in hyperspace, and then throws himself over Jyn, pressing her against her seat so that her neck will not snap.

The ship shoots forward. Bodhi feels his head burst with pain as he clings to the back of Jyn’s seat, feeling her impact against his shoulder. Then he falls.

 

“Have you ever heard the story about a queen who saved her people?”

Sattva is smiling at Bodhi. She looks just as he remembers her, one year ago. Her hair is braided into a crown around her head, and her smile is serene. His head is resting on her lap, and she is stroking his hair with nimble, tapering fingers, without a hint of a callous.

“Her king ordered his men to exterminate the people of his kingdom,” she says, “without knowing that his own wife was one of them.”

She smells like myrtle. There is not a tree in the galaxy such as the ones in Jedha. It has only been several days; Bodhi is already forgetting what it is like.

“She did not hide behind her crown,” says Sattva. “She did not keep silent and keep herself safe while her family fell under the sword. Do you know what she did, little brother?”

Her voice is soft. He aches for her deeply. She always knew the best thing to do. She always knew the right thing to do. Sattva, what do I do?

“She asked for her people to pray for her as she stood on the steps before her king, and said, listen to me,” says Sattva. “Hear my voice. Listen to me.”

Jedha is gone. His mother is gone. His father is gone. His friends are gone. His streets are gone. The rubbish heaps are gone. The squeaking front door of his home is gone. Bodhi tries to reach out to take his sister’s hand, but he cannot find it.

“Have mercy on my people,” Sattva says. Are these her words, or is she just telling a story? Bodhi does not remember anymore. He does not remember how he got here, and where they are going. It is a memory with no beginning, no end. “My king, if you love me, have mercy on my people.”

Bodhi remembers Sattva’s smile. It is dazzling, it is the last thing left of Jedha. It is the last.

“Remember, Bodhi,” Sattva says. “You have the power to make change. No one can do it alone.”

Bodhi lets out a breath. His heartbeat slows.

“Neither could you,” he whispers.

He wakes.

 

Jyn stumbles back into consciousness to the sound of a static-ridden comlink. Her head hurts, and her sight is blurring, but she can still move her toes and fingers, and she can still breathe, so that must count for something.

The ship is floating, directionless. For a moment Jyn forgets why she is strapped in a ship in the first place. Then she remembers Bodhi, and she immediately leaps from her seat even though her head is spinning.

“Bodhi?” She crouches next to Bodhi, who is crumpled in a heap on the floor. She shakes his shoulder, and that sickeningly familiar panic rises in her chest. “Bodhi, can you hear me?”

Bodhi stirs. She heaves for air, when she realises that she has permission to breathe.

“ _Jyn_!” The comlink is still on, miraculously. Cassian sounds like he has already shouted himself hoarse. “Jyn, are you still there?”

Jyn’s hand flies to the comlink, her other hand holding onto Bodhi’s pulse.

“We’re still here,” says Jyn. “Alderaan’s been hit. Alderaan is _gone_ , Cassian.”

“I told Mon Mothma,” Cassian says. His voice is shaking. “Bail Organa, he was--he was last on Alderaan.”

Bodhi gasps for breath. He looks as if he has clawed his way out of the water. Jyn holds his head carefully. Her own head is still aching from the sudden jump to hyperspace. He pulls himself off of the ground, his jaw clenched. Jyn takes his wrist tightly.

“Alderaan,” Bodhi chokes out.

Jyn’s stomach turns. She helps Bodhi to his feet and back into the pilot seat. His hands are shaking. She wants to grab them tight and keep them from growing cold.

“Why?” Jyn says. “Why did they do that? An entire planet--”

Bodhi runs a hand through his hair. Jyn feels her heart cinch, because he looks so drained that the color in him is greyed and deadened. He doesn’t look injured, but if there is any internal damage from the unprepared hyperspace, she wouldn’t know what to do for him.

“Bodhi,” says Jyn.

“It’s just like Jedha,” says Bodhi.

He looks up to the viewport, his hands clenching the controllers of the jet. He takes deep breaths, the kind that brace his shoulders.

“It’s worse than Jedha,” Bodhi says.

Jyn does not know how to respond. She scrambles to check their location on the screened map. They have been blasted towards the outer rim; it is a miracle that they haven’t been blown right out of the galaxy.

“How are we going to do this?” Jyn says.

Bodhi does not answer. Jyn feels her blood run cold as she realizes that there is no possible situation that they could get out of this victorious. Even if the Death Star is evacuated, there are probably hundreds of combat fighter jets that would try to attack them immediately, destroying any chance of destroying the Death Star. Even if the Death Star is evacuated, it does not guarantee that they have the success to destroy it.

It can be destroyed, her father says, it must be destroyed. Jyn wonders if her father knew how many of his colleagues and subordinates would be destroyed alongside it. But she never deluded herself into thinking that her father was perfect, so the question does not disarm her.

“Bodhi,” she says quietly. “Do you think this is possible?”

“What choice do we have?” says Bodhi.

Jyn almost gives a crooked smile at his retort. Actually, it is rather painful to hear it back in a situation like this.

“None that are perfect,” she says. “Perhaps none that are even good.”

Bodhi does not look to her. His knuckles are paling as he clenches the controllers. His breaths are growing shallow, and Jyn tenses, thinking about all the ways she does not know how to resuscitate someone in their time of need.

“Alderaan is gone,” Bodhi echoes.

Jyn swallows hard. She has seen many people die in front of her. She has seen the power of the Death Star twice. But to see a planet from a distance die, and be so removed from it, and not have a single idea of a single person who called Alderaan their home but know that not a single one of them live anymore, makes her realize in her core the horror that is the Empire. Because for a moment, watching destruction from a relatively safe distance, she was the Empire, and she will be once again, when the Rebellion will inevitably destroys the base.

“Jyn, Bodhi,” Cassian says. His voice returns to interrupt the chill. “Are you still there?”

Jyn looks to Bodhi, then takes the comlink.

“We’re here,” she says.

“We’re sending fighter pilots out right now,” Cassian says. “The Death Star is moving closer.”

“Closer to where?” says Jyn.

“To us,” says Cassian. “To Yavin 4. They found our base.”

Jyn’s heart leaps to her throat. She clutches the comlink as if it is Cassian’s hand, and she could wrench him out of danger through the little piece of plastic and metal.

“Are they going to...?”

She demands that Cassian interrupts her, the only time she would ever welcome someone to correct her.

“It’s coming here, and fast,” Cassian says. His voice does not betray any fear, probably moreso because it has been suffocated out of him since childhood rather than the lack of it. “I can’t fly, I’m not cleared from the medical bay--”

“Hold on,” Bodhi says.

His voice is steely. He sets the ship to fly, before launching it into hyperspace. The sudden return to limitless speed makes Jyn’s head hurt, and she cannot take her eyes off of Bodhi. He looks as if he is about to plunge their ship deep into the middle of the ocean without any lifevest, lifeboat, any promise for air. Beads of sweat decorate his temples.

“Bodhi,” says Jyn. “There’s no time to try to bargain with them.”

Her voice cracks, trying to speak over the rushing universe outside of their ship. Bodhi does not look at her, but she knows that he heard her. His eyes gleam.

The ship stutters out of hyperspace. Yavin 4 is in the distance, a messy, grisly planet that shields the hope of a better universe under its heavy foliage. The Death Star could almost pass off as an innocuous moon to their default home. It seems so small from a distance, moving without pause towards their rebel base.

Jyn blood runs cold until she swears it becomes ice in her veins, unmoving. Cassian is on that planet, and Chirrut, and Baze. Her family is on that planet.

“Hold on,” says Bodhi.

With sharp speed, he sets the ship darting towards the Death Star. Several of the Rebel fighter jets are racing them to their target. Bodhi accelerates.

“What’s your plan?” Jyn says, feeling a warring wave of helplessness and fearlessness. “We give the Death Star any indication that we know where their weakness is now, they’ll kill us all.”

“We know for sure that Galen’s flaw in the Death Star means total destruction?” says Bodhi.

“It’s right in the reactor, in the core,” says Jyn. “There’s nothing else it can do but cause a chain reaction of destruction.”

She would like to hope that maybe it would just inhibit the Death Star, but it would have never been so simple. Her father would believe in absolutes as much as she never does.

Bodhi reaches for the comlink, tampering with the dials. His entire body is tense with anticipation as he scrambles to interfere with their signals. His fingers fly over the dashboard and the comlink, deft and desperate.

“I’ll save her,” says Bodhi. He is breathless. “If I save her, then I save the world. Take the controllers.”

Jyn hesitates. She is not unaccustomed to far-fetched plans and high chances of failure. But the Death Star is moving towards Yavin 4, where Cassian is, and there is not enough time to save anyone.

“Jyn!” says Bodhi.

Jyn grabs the controllers, steering the ship haphazardly as Bodhi focuses on the comlink. He looked like he could sweat blood at this very moment.

“Got it,” he breathes. He lifts the comlink to his lips, his hands shaking. “Sattva. Sattva Rook.”

“What are you doing?” says Jyn.

“I’m interfering with their radio,” says Bodhi. His knuckles are bone white as he clutches the comlink. “Sattva Rook. Are you there? Sattva.”

The rebel pilots are approaching. Jyn’s breath tenses as she weighs the possibility that the rebels will mistake them for Empire ships and try to shoot them down as well. If they try to subtly dock the Death Star for Sattva, no doubt they will go down with the fire.

“Sattva Rook!” Bodhi cries out. “Are you there? Are you--?”

The comlink fizzes. Bodhi swiftly switches on the radio, eavesdropping in on the signals of the Death Star’s intercom. Jyn spares a glance at the Rebel jets drawing dauntingly nearer.

“Stand-by alert,” says a crackling voice at the intercom from the Death Star. “Death Star approaching. Estimated time to firing range, fifteen minutes.”

Bodhi waves Jyn away from the controllers as he takes the pilot seat again. They are short a miracle, to wrangle the Death Star into a net and drag it away from Yavin 4.

“The Rebel planes are already coming,” says Jyn. “We need to act _now_.”

“Sattva Rook!” Bodhi yells into the comlink. “Sattv-- _shit_!”

They barely dodge a beam that hurtles in their direction. Jyn holds her breath when she swears she hears metal being scraped off of the ship as the beam just nicks them at the top. Bodhi accelerates their jet, swinging away from the Death Star’s blasters swiveling their aim towards them.

“I’m sorry!” Bodhi says. “I’m sorry, I’m--”

“Just fly!” Jyn says.

She sees the rebel jets swoop in formation down to the Death Star; green blaster jets claw at them and shower the galaxy with a man-made meteor storm. She digs her nails into the seat.

“They’re already drawing fire,” says Jyn. “This is a battle now. Everyone’s engaged.”

“Sattva!” Bodhi is not listening to her. One hand is managing the controllers and the other is pressing the comlink against his lips. “Sattva, it’s me! I’ll get you, I’ll come get you, it’s me, come out--”

Jyn does not know how Bodhi expect Sattva to respond even if she could, not if she is surrounded by Stormtroopers and generals who have their eyes sharpened for any defectors. She doubts that he is using the comlink for any other purpose than to say her name unapologetically.

Bodhi suddenly hurls the useless comlink against the glass. It bounces pathetically off of the viewport and onto the dashboard.

“I’ll get on the star,” Bodhi says.

“Don’t you dare,” says Jyn.

“That’s the most straightforward way to find her.”

“It’s also the most straightforward way to die.”

“It worked in Scarif.”

Jyn takes Bodhi by his shoulders to shake him, swivel him to face her until he cannot look longingly at the Death Star that at best will explode within fifteen minutes.

“Scarif was a _miracle_ , Bodhi,” Jyn says. “And it as the only hope we had to find the plans and defeat the Empire. It was for a purpose--”

“And she isn’t?” Bodhi says, stung.

Jyn hesitates. She suddenly finds herself sounding uneasily like Cassian and his calls for duty, his means to an end, his silent sorrow for his lie to her that nevertheless did not promise that he wouldn’t kill someone else’s family, under someone else’s orders, because their daughter isn’t riding the same fighter jet as him at that time.

But she does not let go of him, her grip tightening all the more. Because that does not change that the Death Star is moving towards Yavin 4, and she may be forced to watch that explosive, omnipotent destruction again, and again, and her friend wants to walk himself straight into the pack of wolves.

“You’d make her watch you get shot down the moment you step into that station,” Jyn says. Her voice threatens to crack; she does not care if it does anymore. Let it break, and her words will be all the sharper. “You think that will save her?”

Bodhi’s jaw tenses. He looks away, towards the Death Star and its looming, inescapable presence. He takes a breath; Jyn braces herself for Bodhi’s immovable drive to save his sister.

But that is interrupted when an explosion sears the black space.

Bodhi lets out a cry. Jyn holds her breath as a rebel jet splinters into nothing but embers over the surface of the Death Star. It is possibly only because of miraculous intervention by the Force that Bodhi does not crash their own jet into the Death Star in shock.

“Who was that?” Bodhi says. “Was that Cassian? Was that--?”

“Cassian isn’t flying,” Jyn says. She hates that Bodhi has made this mistake because now it makes Jyn dread that maybe she is the one who misheard, that Cassian is aboard one of those jets to destroy the Death Star and that may or may not have been him. “How long do we have until they’ll attack Yavin 4?”

“By the rate that their station is moving, we have maybe twenty minutes,” says Bodhi. He wipes the sweat from his forehead. “They don’t even know it.”

“What?” says Jyn.

“That flaw in the Death Star is a secret, isn’t it?” says Bodhi. “They don’t even know what’s coming.”

Jyn feels the grisly struggle in her head and chest, demanding heroism for her father’s bravery and sacrifice and wrestling with the coldblooded, hypocritical destruction of it all. There simply is not enough time to decide, to wrestle all night with the choices until she breaks a hip and is left limping to the finish. She doesn’t know.

All she knows, however, is that the Empire is about to destroy the Rebellion in one swift move. Her heart hardens at the Emperor, at the Imperial generals who can decide so flippantly that entire planets will be destroyed, and hearken that their own people will run the same risk without so much as a moment of moral hesitation.

Jyn can see the Death Star plans etched out before her, beholding her father’s legacy and her dawning realization that that childhood shame of his contribution to destruction has not diminished. Her friend’s loved one is in the station that he built and will destroy, that they all will destroy. Whether or not she loved the Empire, hailed Emperor Palpatine and cheered at the destruction of Alderaan and Jedha and maybe Yavin 4, she was someone whom Bodhi loved more than himself.

“We should go,” Jyn says.

Her voice is quiet. Bodhi turns to her. She wants to suffocate him, wrap his eyes and ears with cotton so that he will not know what was coming, rather than stare at the viewport bracing every moment for that last blow into the Death Star to come.

“What?” says Bodhi.

“There’s no way we can find her,” says Jyn.

Bodhi does not speak. Jyn holds her breath, an apology at the tip of her tongue, but she bites down hard on it instead. Bodhi looks to the comlink, which is unresponsive. Then he looks to Yavin 4, vulnerable and laid bare for the Death Star to ravage.

“Take the blaster controllers,” he says.

“What?” Jyn says.

“I fly better than you,” says Bodhi.

It isn’t incorrect, but Jyn senses that that is not the reason. She reaches over to the dashboard, fingers curling around the triggers for the jet’s blasters. She cannot take her eyes off of Bodhi, watching as while he takes in a deep breath the gleam in his eyes and waning terror hardens into something unrecognizable.

He takes the comlink, readjusts the dials. The calls of the rebel pilots come bursting forth.

“There's a heavy fire zone on this side,” a voice calls out from the comlink. “Red Five, where are you?”

“I can’t shake him!” a young voice cries out.

“Red Five, this is Rogue One,” says Bodhi into the comlink. “Or at least, one third of them. We’ve got you covered. Hold on.”

“Rogue One?” the young voice cries out. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Bodhi tosses the comlink aside. He nods to Jyn, whose hands are growing sweaty against the smooth controllers.

“When the fighter jet is within shooting range, rain hell,” says Bodhi.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” says Jyn.

“I studied flying with them,” Bodhi says. His voice is hard. “I know what they’ve been taught to do.”

That is not what Jyn is asking, but Bodhi knows that well enough that he pointedly looks away from her and accelerates their jet towards an Imperial fighter. There is no time to ask Bodhi, or comfort him, or ask him if he is certain with his decision. The Rebellion base is only fifteen minutes away from the Death Star’s range.

“Now!” Bodhi says.

The moment the swerving TIE fighter is within range, Jyn presses the trigger. The fighter explodes, its pieces scattering across the surface of the Death Star. She is grateful that there is no visible body, but nevertheless her mind is made up. She detests killing from a distance.

“Thanks, Rogue One!” the young pilot on the other end of the comlink says.

Bodhi does not react. Some of the rebel jets sink deep into the Death Star trench. Not long after, TIE fighters follow. Bodhi races ahead before turning the jet into a sharp U-turn, diving down towards the TIE fighters head-on before smashing into their small, sleek ships as Jyn launches the blaster at them.

“The Death Star is five minutes away,” Bodhi says.

Jyn clenches her teeth until her jaw aches. She wants to look at Bodhi, to see his face and eyes and convince herself that he is okay with this, that he will be okay with this, to the very end, but she cannot look away when she has TIE fighters to blast. She knows that it wouldn’t be true, anyway.

“Stay on target!” says the voice on the comlink.

“Rendezvous at mark six point one!”

“Bodhi,” Jyn says. “You--”

She doesn’t have the words to say it. So she blasts the hell out of a TIE fighter in hopes that it would do something to break down that heavy weight in her chest. She cannot see Bodhi’s face in her peripheral. She does not think she could bear it, not right now.

“They’re three minutes away,” Bodhi says. His voice is strained. “They--”

“Why?” Jyn says.

She cannot help it. That question weighs so much upon her heart. She is grateful that she cannot see Bodhi’s face, and hopes that he does not see this as disgust or betrayal. It is anything but.

Bodhi does not answer. She does not blame him.

“I’m in range!” says a rebel.

Bodhi hurtles their jet towards the Imperial pilot following after the rebel jets. Jyn presses down on the trigger and does not look away when they die.

“Rogue One, get out of the zone!” says one of the leaders. “Or you’ll be caught in the aftershock!”

Bodhi accelerates. He zeroes in on another TIE fighter. Jyn finishes the job for him.

“Rogue One, do you copy?”

Jyn looks to Bodhi. His eyes are burning with a destructive fire. She can almost feel herself get caught in the flames as he flies faster, faster, skimming the trench as if he plans to bury his jet into it. Her heart suddenly catches in her throat.

She swipes the comlink off the ground.

“Rogue One, we copy!” she says.

Bodhi jolts. He turns to her, eyes wide, his breath bated, and Jyn realizes with a painful jolt that he would have chosen not to come up for air. She grabs his wrist, her nails digging into his sharp bone.

“Don’t stop now,” Jyn says.

Bodhi swallows hard. She tightens her grip, claiming his pulse in her palm as if she could clutch it tight and never let anyone take it from her as long as she holds on, not even Bodhi himself.

“For the Force’s sake, Bodhi,” Jyn says. “Don’t stop now.”

A strange look passes across Bodhi’s eyes, but it is gone before Jyn could fear it. Finally, he turns away from her, and pulls the jet out of the Death Star trench. They are flying fast, towards Yavin 4, the countdown chasing after their heels, and Jyn wants nothing more than to crash onto that planet, stumble into the thick stench of a jungle and never look up to see what they left behind.

“Wait,” Bodhi says, and he turns to look back.

The light reaches the end of the trench.

There is a fraction of a second of silence; that tantalizing wonder if what they had achieved had worked, and that moment where the Force gives them a fraction of a second to regret. It does not last. In a moment, the Death Star explodes.

Bodhi does not close his eyes, and neither does Jyn. They will see this to the very end.

It is as brilliant and as terrible as Alderaan, as Scarif and Jedha. A ring of fire, and then nothingness. Pieces of crumpled metal jettisoned from the destruction, flying like shooting stars. The supernova was an inelegant one, no flash of beautiful color, no gold and silver, just scraps of scorched metal that cut into the galaxy.

The comlink explodes with cheers. There is screaming, there is laughing, there is jubilant cries from the Rebellion. The Death Star is gone. The hope lives another day. The dream lives for another day. The galaxy is safe, and is saved, the Death Star the last massacre of the war. The Rebellion celebrate so loudly it makes Jyn’s head hurt.

In that moment, Bodhi’s hope is gone.

Silently, Bodhi reaches down to the comlink that he had thrown to the ground, and switches it off. Impenetrable silence follows. There is no crackling of an untameable fire, no screams of the dying who had been vaporized instantly. Even the scraps that are left are silent, floating eerily peacefully in the space as that empty hole is left behind.

Jyn can hear her heart racing. It is finished. Her eyes and nose burn, but she doesn’t know why and if that is a good thing. It is finished. But there is no wave of relief that washes over her. Not even a sense of completion, that she has seen her father’s last hope finished. She turns to Bodhi, and her heart sinks.

He stares ahead, towards the viewport, his hands curled loosely over the controllers. His chin is raised, his shoulders braced, which is so different from the young man who shuddered and shrank at the crowd of rebels who scorned him for having pity just hours before. Jyn does not understand why he saves his dignity when he is alone with her, who wanted nothing more than for him to break the silence. But he does nothing but sit, silently, taking in deep, steady breaths.

“Bodhi,” Jyn says.

He does not respond. Jyn feels her chest tighten. His eyes are wide and frozen, dry, searching the stars for his sister’s ashes. He does not hear Jyn; and the thought terrifies her that he never will, from here on out.

“Bodhi,” Jyn says again, except now her voice is broken.

She wants to say, I’m sorry, I understand, I’m sorry, but she can’t. She and Bodhi are the opposite sides of the same coin now; he had broken his own heart to break the Death Star and save the Rebellion. There was no debate of what should be the right choice, there is no peace, there is no right or wrong. In the end, he made a choice and chose the Rebellion, whether or not it was right to kill everyone on the Death Star for the sake of victory. He chose the Rebellion over his sister whom he loves, and Jyn cannot understand.

“Please,” she says.

She does not know what she is asking him for. But he is sitting so still in the pilot’s seat, his eyes are dry and he is silent, and he is still. He has lost the last of everything he has ever known in his life for a rebellion that does not love him, and he does not make a sound. She is terrified because he is a fighter now, he is a soldier in this war. The Rebellion asked him to sacrifice his sister, and now it will make him bare his teeth and sharpen his claws, to engineer his life into a killing machine that will give everything until there is nothing left for himself. He is a soldier, and he cannot cry, and she sees that which was soft and kind and so desperately loving rust into cold, unbreakable metal that is built only to resist. She wants to scream at him to cry, like she did on Eadu, to whimper and to let his voice wobble. She wants him to be.

So she reaches out and gently touches his hair. It is so simple, and a ghost of what she remembers her own mother doing for her when the farm was cold and her mother jumped at every sound outside of their room. Bodhi is warm under her fingertips and does not flinch away, and she feels a rush of love for that. She strokes his hair, her hands shaking because she is at a loss for words but there is so much she wants him to know and have and feel.

And as if her hand was the weight of the entire galaxy, he breaks. He suddenly bows over, hugging his middle as he gasps for air. His shoulders are shaking, and his chest heaves for breath that it cannot take. Jyn instinctively moves to catch him, but her hand stays on his head, careful, because he is both the most resilient and most fragile thing in the galaxy in this very moment.

“Oh, Bodhi,” Jyn whispers.

He chokes down his cries. She takes his hand tightly and closes her eyes. Her fingers are calloused and coarse as she brushes the hair from his face and rests her forehead against his. They stay like this for a long time.

-

One year ago, Sattva Rook climbed aboard a ship to the battle station. Her hair was neatly plaited, and her best clothes were hanging off of her starved frame.

She recognized some of the other passengers from long-ago classrooms. She grinned at them, taking their hands enthusiastically. Very few of them have ever left their city, let alone their moon. They were academics, scholars, teachers, activists, protesters, but they were still so very young, and the idea of adventure frothed in their chests.

She nodded to the Imperial pilot that would fly their ship. His face was familiar, and certainly of Jedha; she reckoned that he was one of Bodhi’s classmates at the academy. She gave him a smile of acknowledgement, but he was too busy working the dashboard to return it.

She sat by the window, her hands full of papers covered in writing, in diagrams and charts, in proposals. She knew that she would be silly to think that the Emperor would have all the time in the world to listen to all her ideas, suggestions, concerns, on top of all forty others who were on the ship with her. Still, she could not narrow it down to her top ten concerns. She did not know how long the flight would take, so maybe she would have time to review everything she had written and organize her thoughts from there.

One of her former classmates sat next to her with a booklet of just as many pages of thoughts. They talked several thousand words with each other before the ship even took off. He was the top of the class one year under her, and believed in a Jedha that would live harmoniously. Intellectuals are not above hope.

She pressed her nose against the window as the ship broke through Jedha’s atmosphere. She always gently envied her brother’s traipsing through the galaxy, bringing back holographs of the places he has seen and stories of the planets he has landed on. Seeing the sweep of stars like sand on a beach all around her, she cannot help but laugh at how little his words could describe it. She would laugh at him later, when her work was done and his joy would return, and he would not be silent in the face of a little ribbing.

“Look at that,” she said to her companion. She pressed her hand against the viewport. “I could touch the stars if they’d let me out.”

The flight was shorter than she expected. The battle station was smaller than she expected. It looked more like an abandoned moon from this distance than a station, but perhaps it was because they were far away for now, and of course the Empire would not want to be so easily recognizable when there were rebels like Saw Gerrera tearing their city apart. She hoped that Bodhi was still shuttling somewhere through space, far from Jedha and from the explosions. She would ask him later, if he was well.

The jet made its descent. Now the fellow passengers were murmuring to each other, voices tightened. The closer they approached the battle station, the more bare and desolate it became. There were no officials marching along the surface, no sign of life. Nothing but the cold red rocks of a dusty moon, with mounds and craters like only anthills resided here.

Then, it became clear.

All at once, when everyone realized what was coming, there was an outbreak--cries of mercy and horror. One of the passengers stood up and raced to the cockpit, as if to wrestle the ship away from the Empire. He was beaten against the head by a stormtrooper. Sattva rushed to him, but she received a blow against the cheek. A tooth fell loose. She clutched it in her palm desperately, panic rising when she realized there was nothing to worry about a missing tooth now.

“This is a mistake!” cried her companion. “This is a mistake--we’re for the Empire! We are loyal to the Empire!”

The stormtroopers did not react. Sattva scrambles over her seat, searching for the face of the pilot who knew her brother. She searches desperately through her memory for a name, and then cries it out. Have mercy, remember me, have mercy, please. But the pilot did not look back.

“Those who have criticisms of the Empire,” said the officer who had led them into this ship, “are against the Empire.”

The ship landed roughly on the abandoned moon. Sattva was shaking so much she could barely stand on her two feet. The stormtrooper shoved her into the line, barking orders at them all to exit the ship. She could not stand, so she had to crawl instead.

One of the scholars could not handle waiting for death. He broke from the line and ran. There was nowhere he could go, so he did not get far. Nine shots from the blaster later, he was dead. Someone in the line wetted themselves. Sattva wildly thought back to all the papers she had left on her seat, scattered and unorganized and hers. She did not understand why, but they had condemned her.

“Those who see flaws in the Empire,” said the officer, “are enemies of the Empire.”

The stormtroopers lined them up along an empty crater. Sattva’s knees were shaking, and her bones were brittle, but she did not want to die on her knees, like she was bowing for forgiveness. There was nothing to be forgiven. She had done nothing wrong. She pushed herself onto her feet, and found that her nose and eyes were streaming. She looked ahead anyway.

There were only two stormtroopers to do the job. There was nowhere for them to run, no ship to steal and escape in, no home to hide in. There was no need to waste more hands than necessary. They started at either end of the line, standing behind their prisoners. They pulled out their blasters, pointed it at the prisoners’ heads, and shot. Their bodies fell into the crater, two by two.

Sattva could not turn her head. She was somewhere in the middle of the line, but she could not tell how far she was from either end, if it would soon be her turn or if she had to be left with a racing heart and her knees shaking violently under her. Two by two, her companions fell into the crater like rags, gathering into a soiled, clumsy pile like the rubbish heaps she once dug through as a child.

She lifted her chin, her eyes fixed on the officer who stood on the opposite end of the crater from them. He watched emotionlessly, almost boredly, and she realized with a sudden, agonizing fire that she was going to die the hated enemy of the Empire she had given everything for. She had given everything, and--

Her companion by her side jerked before crumpling into the pit. Sattva took in a deep breath and thought of Jedha, of home, of her family, as if they could cushion the blow she would not feel. Before she could bring up a memory of her Bodhi, the blaster shot through her skull, and she fell dead in the crater.

  
One year later, Bodhi Rook made a choice.


End file.
